Living with Borderline Personality Disorder

What the Fu** is wrong with my mind?

My struggles with mental illness started at a young age. I first began displaying bipolar/mood disorder tendencies at the age of 10. I had frequent violent anger outbursts and was extremely emotional. I am diagnosed with bipolar 1 disorder, as well as Borderline Personality Disorder.
  I was diagnosed with BPD in 2020, but prior to learning of my illness, I had no idea why I felt like I was going crazy all the time. It started with my relationships. Whether it be a friendship or romantic relationship, I was severely insecure and paranoid about how others viewed me and how I viewed myself in relation to other people. I started to notice that I felt like my friends or significant other did not really want to be in my life, and thought that they were playing games or plotting to go against me in some way. I could never get a break from the overwhelming feeling that I was going to be abandoned. To a normal person, having someone leave your life is just a natural part of relationships, but to me, it felt like I was going to lose a part of myself. I could not even begin to fathom my life without these people, even if I just met them a few weeks ago...I felt like an obsessive insane person, and I went to extremes emotionally to keep my friends from leaving. I would cut myself or scratch all the skin off my arms or threaten suicide, sometimes actually following through to attempt to take my life.
  The people in my life began to actually abandon me because of my crazy behaviors. I was so afraid to lose the ones I loved...but I was unconsciously causing them leave me. I pushed everyone away. I began experiencing severe paranoia, especially in social situations. I picked up on every single body movement, change in tone of voice, choice of words, and was hyper aware of these things in a way that was inaccurately displaying how others perceived me. I could barely have a normal conversation without having intense anxiety because it was like the part of my brain that perceives other people was being hijacked by the world's  most insecure and paranoid state of mind you could imagine. Typically in these social situations, my anxiety level was so high that I would dissociate from myself and experience the most terrifying feeling of not existing. I remember asking other people, "do you think I am a real person?" And when they replied shockingly "yes of course you are real!" I would then think that they were a part of this elaborate scheme to play with my mind.
  I would go through these personality "phases" where I thought I liked to wear a certain type of clothing and do certain activities for fun and my personality would match these traits, and suddenly I felt like none of that made any sense and now I have no idea why I ever thought I was that person. Then I would change my phase and so on and so forth. People described me as a people pleaser or easily influenced, but the truth is I had no idea who the hell I was. I am an incredible singer and writer, but if those talents didn't suit my idea of myself that day, then it got pushed to the back for later use.
  All of these things combined resulted in completely chaotic and dysfunctional relationships with others. The people in my life who really loved me and didn't want to leave, had to endure torture in order to have a relationship with me. My mood was constant up and down, from extremely high mania to severely low depression and feelings of impending doom. I tried to bring my loved ones into all my big plans to become this amazing person with all these goals and aspirations, expecting them to support my ever changing life path. I would quit jobs out of the blue because it didn't feel right anymore and come up with all these insane ideas to make money and become successful.
  My loved ones didn't understand how I would be so loving, caring and compassionate one minute, and the next I was blaming them for not truly loving me and playing with my mind. The guilt from these episodes was so intense that it felt like no apology or amends would ever mean anything because I kept doing the same thing over and over again! Just to feel such intense guilt and admit everything was my fault and I'm an evil, horrible human being that isn't deserving of their love.
  My mind felt like it was possessed. My brain felt broken and I had no idea why I felt so different from everyone else. For the most part, other people seemed to be living with normal thinking and behaviors and way of viewing themselves and others. Why was it so hard for me to live every day? I felt like I was in a living nightmare and that I would never get out of it. This went on for years, losing relationship after relationship with no answers or freedom from this bondage. I attended therapy in the past, but found myself lying to my therapist because I felt I couldn't trust her and she would lock me up somewhere. Until I found my therapist that I have now, there was only darkness...