Journey Back To Me: Learning to live with Borderline Personality Disorder

Friend vs. Foe

Chapter 4 Friends vs. Foes

Friends, Amigos, Copains, Buddies, Gal pals, Besties. Man, do I cringe every time I hear the word friends or any synonym of it. To be honest, I have not had the best go around with friends. 'Friends' is a construct I never really understood. I understand people need to have some human contact, but I never really understood why having friends was so important. Nearly all of my so-called friends were complete and utter assholes to me but I continued to be friends with them, because what kid wants to be left out of the group? I suffered through their crap so I could say I had "friends," and not look like a loner or freak because no one wanted to be my friend. I was not strong enough to be on my own. They caused a lot more anxiety than actually having fun times. A lot of them have taken advantage of me over the years because I let them. I still don't know how to stand up for myself.

Even before knowing, I had BPD it had always been a struggle to find friends who liked me for me. I let anyone who was semi-nice be my friend, treat me terribly and it would come back to bite me in the ass in the end. I wanted to feel like I belonged and I never have. When your friend kicks your sprained swollen ankle, while seeing a movie, thinks it is hysterical that you are in pain, and never considered this behavior as abuse. I didn't realize I was being used when she would only let me be around if she had no one else to play with, then walk faster leaving me behind trying to catch to her as others walked by. We were ten at the time, and all I wanted was to be accepted or have the notion I belonged with a group.

Elementary school was rough. Kids were always calling me fat or something of that nature to make me mad enough to become the bully, and I would end up in trouble. I became so angry (even though I did not consider it anger; I was nine, still learning about emotions) that I beat up a child because he called me some name, and stole the handball from me. He tripped, fell to the ground, and I kicked him in the ribs. He was not seriously hurt, thank God. To this day, I still feel horrible about it. Of course, I knew that kicking him was wrong. I did not know how to cope with my feelings, so anger was the way I fixed things. Having friendships did not become any easier after becoming the bully either. I lost trust and faith in people.

Years later when you realize that your so-called friends have messed you up, you lose more trust in humanity. At ten years old, my neighbor in the apartment complex, Renee, decided that we should watch porn. Since I was a follower, I did not know how to say no; I let her run things in my life, so she decided to watch pay-per-view porn at my house. I was afraid my parents are going to find out and get angry when they got the cable bill. I told her we should not watch and that my parents would be mad. She did not like that answer, whined, and ended up getting her way. Therefore, we started watching some generic blowjob scene. I do not remember where my parents were at the time. She kept flipping to regular TV just in case my parents caught us watching porn. We were in the living room, where anyone could see. When I asked her how she knew what porn was, she replied with, "Oh my older brother." It makes you think what kind of family life she had. Yikes! Anyway, my parents did not catch us, and thank God, I did not get in trouble for that PPV charge. I was so nervous my parents were going to blame me for that crap Renee made us watch. I hated myself for wanting people to like me, hated the fact I had to follow or do what they wanted just so that I could say I had somebody as a friend; hated that no one wanted to do what I wanted, and no one showed mutual respect. I hated myself for a long time, trying to be loyal, nice, and caring but no one gave a fuck about how I felt.

Later that summer, I became intrigued and found the porn channel on my antenna scrambled TV because I was not going to watch it on the cable-enabled television and get in trouble for this. I would not be in trouble per se; I just did not want my parents yelling at me for charging up the cable bill for something I did not want to watch in the first place. I felt like I needed to keep this a secret. One Saturday afternoon, I had a couple friends over who also lived in the apartment complex, and we ended up in my bedroom instead of playing outside. For some reason I thought it was a good idea to show them the porn channel I found. We watched scrambled porn, flipping back and forth to Nickelodeon, again so my parents did not catch us. I do not know why I thought it was cool to show them this. Subjecting my brother, my best friend McKenna and some younger children to porn still makes me feel horrible and guilty, even though I was a child at the time and I did not realize that it would still have a huge effect on me. It was the one and only time this happened. I guess since I was the oldest out of the group, I was the coolest and had to prove that somehow. In my head, I had to keep them as friends because I was not making any new ones.