“Borderline Personality Disorder.”

I was diagnosed with this in my car on my lunch break in 2018.

I am not quite sure why I was given this diagnosis, especially on my lunch break, but I can guess.

I cry a lot.

I desperately want a nice mom like Miss Honey from Matilda.

I sometimes feel lonely and I have felt suicidal.

I often feel as if I am floating above my body, and I ask for a lot of help.

I recognize this about me, but still, why the label, “Borderline?”

I have wonderful relationships.

I’m not quick to anger.

I don’t think in black and white terms.

I don’t hate myself.

I am not impulsive.

~

“It’s in your mind that I’m abandoning you,” my therapist said before she did, in fact, abandon me for good and leave me in a puddle of tears for two years without making sure I smoothly transitioned to someone else.

Given three names of providers and asked not to contact her, I was left on my own to figure things out.

~

I often wonder if my therapist took my history into consideration before branding me.

I am the adult child of an alcoholic and addict.

I have been called “worthless.”

I was a scapegoat.

I applied to college to get out on my own.

I left my home eight years ago and have not returned.

How anyone can feel okay after all this, I don’t know.

I haven’t felt well, but this does not mean my personality is disordered.

While the name bothers me, there are other reasons why I am dropping this label.

This label has a huge stigma.

Mental health providers drop and run from those with this diagnosis frequently.

People given this label are sent to Dialectical Behavioral Therapy to work on regulating their emotions and are rarely referred to what many need—attachment trauma specialists.

The label makes you feel like you’re bad.

~

Please, mental health providers, tell me what at all about crying, feeling suicidal, and feeling lonely after suffering childhood trauma is something to scorn and then abandon?

What about these people are “bad” and scary?

~

When given this label, you will not be believed.

If you cry, you’re too emotional.

If you are mistreated, it’s just the disease that asks for better treatment.

If you’re suicidal, you’re attention-seeking.

If you ask for help, you’re manipulative.

If you express love for your therapist, you’re abandoned.

This label ties your hands.

It is the witch-hunting of 2021, and I refuse, as someone with complex PTSD and attachment trauma, to continue wearing a label therapists use, less to help, but rather, as a weapon of protection.

Goodbye, Borderline.

May you be removed from every female survivor’s chart for good.

~