After the suicide of my partner, 4 months ago, today, I have experienced intense grief, sleep deprivation, severe stress, conflicting emotions the list of which I could never complete or do justice here. This traumatic loss has left me with adrenal fatigue with another complicating factor and rapid weight gain that is still on-going. It has left me beyond broken-hearted, longing, striving to find memories that aren’t so searingly sharp as to not be accessible in any comforting way, as yet.
My partner was a quiet borderline, high functioning and I didn’t know that until after she had taken her life. It was so traumatic. So shocking. So incredibly painful to this day. Complex and Complicated grief that we don’t ever get over but we very slowly learn to grow around. If you have lost a loved one with Borderline Personality Disorder to suicide, please be sure to take care of yourself, as next to impossible as that is in the wake of the unending pain, longing, grief, sorrow and toxic guilt to name but a few of the many, many emotions that are daunting in their haunting absence of a love one, beloved one, who has left us so broken-hearted, so lost, each of us, so alone in an understanding only we, tragically, know.
People who love and care about you won’t know what to do or how to really help. Reach out to a therapist and join a survivors of suicide support group. Being with others who truly know what you are feeling helps as much as it can when it feels so totally like nothing else comes or ever will come even close to bearable, let alone some solace or help.
People love people very much with Borderline Personality Disorder and there are more suicides by people with BPD than most could ever imagine. Millions are left grieving, feeling guilty, wondering why, and as in my case and many others, suffering autoimmune diseases the onset of which correlates to the extraordinary stress and grief of losing a loved one to suicide.
People with Borderline Personality are not their so-called disorder. “BPD” is a trauma response and each person with BPD here, or whose taken his/her own life deserves to be respected and known to be so, so, very human – wounded souls.
My late partner was a wonderfully talented, beautiful woman, she had such an amazing laugh that hid so much pain, and a smile that took my breath my away. She was so vital, with so much life ahead of her. I will miss her forever – absolutely forever. There aren’t enough words if I talked forever where words fail me anyway, today (April 27/19) on the 4 month “anniversary” of her suicide to ever envision a time when this won’t hurt like beyond hell and then some.
She had so much going for her. She had many difficulties that she hid from me, internalizing untold agony, fearing for the entire almost 5 years of our relationship that I would just leave her if I knew she had Borderline Personality Disorder. This in and of itself is haunting.
It’s still beyond incredibly painful, overwhelming, drastically effecting me in so many ways, including adrenal fatigue and other complicating physical issues that are causing me rapid weight gain aside from fluid retention common in adrenal fatigue. It is still beyond my ability to even fully face without some denial that she is gone. My body is screaming in its holding so much of this trauma and pain.
It was so traumatic. She was suicidal and homicidal. I had to fight for my life and I was injured in the process. Fighting for my life against someone I loved so, very much. It all happened so shockingly fast. As I defended my own life, she turned away from me quickly, backed up, then turned to face me, as I struggled in vain to be able to get to her as she butchered herself with a very big, sharp, knife. I called for help right away. I tried to save her but I think she was already gone. Nothing about these traumatizing seconds or were they minutes that seemed like hours was clear to me at that time or that night or for some time after.
It was horrific. It was senseless. I was so traumatized. It remains tragic. It is complex complicated grief and one feels so incredibly alone with it all. So many emotions so often. I keep trying to grow around the grief while yet in aspects of this re-awakened Complex Post Traumatic Stress and complex grief, the trauma of her homicidal/suicidal “state” leaves me wondering every time I am pulled under it all again, daily, why? Could I have saved her? Why did she want to take my life too? What happened? Why couldn’t she know my love, feel it deeply and ever take it in. She, as it turns out, could not take in all the love I gave her and that, too, as much as anything hurts so much. There are no words to express what that feels like.
Such a peaceful, internalizing person traumatized in her past with Borderline Personality, itself, really not the cluster fuck psychiatry makes it out to be in dehumanizing people. A trauma response that leaves those with BPD in an ocean of pain the likes of which only those who have or have had BPD can truly know. I know that pain. I knew that pain when I had BPD, which I recovered fully from in 1995. I was so lucky and/or blessed to not ever be suicidal.
Now, as a result of her tragic and traumatizing desperate actions, I am left to miss her, ache for her, knowing what the pain of BPD truly is. Not wanting to reduce her to being a “borderline” in all that “cluster B fuck bull shit” would try to take away her humanity. I hate that! I despise that! I feel incredible sorrow and also as deeply, still I feel so much anger. I long for memories to matter more sweetly and completely instead of still being tortuous reminders of a battle she lost that cannot ever do justice to who she was. She was so much more than the “cluster B fuck ‘Borderline'” – she was a human being dying inside with so much pain – none of it caused by her. None of it her fault. She did not ask for the trauma of her childhood.
I think of you today, every day, in some measure, Babe, as a the beautiful woman, the beautiful soul inside of your brokenness who I loved with all my heart, and I promise you when I grow more around the grief, when I can get unstuck from the acute phase of grief, Babe, I will honour your memory. I will honour the softness we shared, the times that were beautiful and deep and so incredibly meaningful.
I now must endure not only your absence – it is so fucking painfully quiet without you. Like a hauntingly quiet that echoes from the shadows of the life you vacated and yet echoes so spiritually strongly from where you now are resting in peace. Whole, and pain free.
I love you. I hate your for trying to take my life and for taking yours. I love you. I feel so betrayed by you. I love you. I hurt. I need so much time to get out of this pit of darkened dauntingly despairing desolation of desertion. I love you. I long to feel that love for you again. I really do.
I continue to process to get beyond this and back to being able to feel the memories of the sweetness of your smile, your touch, of how much you tried and gave. I long to feel even a glimpse beyond this fucking agony, of what we had, what we shared. I abhor the absence of being able to feel these feelings, I long to feel those warm loving feelings, again, for you, for me, I long to feel them so desperately warmly and not present profoundly penetratingly painful – but I still can’t as of yet. I am sorry. God, I loved you. I love you. I will again, in time, feel that love and know those sweet memories as something other than angry pain that re-traumatizes. I long for those feelings again.
I was breaking up with you, but, I was always going to be here for you. Didn’t you know that? Why couldn’t you trust that in and about me even if you couldn’t trust anything else. You have taken such a chunk of my heart with you “B.B” sweetheart, Oh God, I am breathless without you. Will it ever not hurt as much as it does?
I am strongly still continuing to work in the service of God to help as many as I can live to know a life worth living. You so deserved that. I feel like I failed you, so close to me, yet hiding from me in ways I did not know.
I feel so betrayed. I don’t blame you. I just feel so betrayed. I am sorry.
I am so lost without you. I will love your forever. We will be close again, the more I can heal. It’s taking forever and it promises to take so much longer. I am so sorry for my anger, for how I can’t touch the sweet, silly, and funny warm memories at all right now as tears roll down my cheeks. They are still encased in trauma, pain, anger and darkness. I am so sorry. I pray to God that they will be released from this desolate dark night of the soul – the kind that lasts as long as it must. I am powerless over this dark night of the soul.
I have been so impacted by your desperate act, your suicide, the violent end to your beautiful deserving journey here. May God hold you close, may you be resting in the most peaceful sunny Glory of God, in a place where you are finally forever whole and healed my sweet one. God, if only you could have known how I would have loved you always in life too.
I don’t want to stop typing this out, as my heart requires I do, and as I do, when I just don’t know what else to do. I have written thousands of pages to you and for me and in trying to cope with all this grief. When I am here, in trying to be close to you, still, each time, the world is crashing down around me, parts of day after day, and yet again now. The 27th of every month since you took your life is unbearable though I try to go on. I will go on. I have my mission and purpose from my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to whom I gave my life when I was 9, 17 and being baptized “born again” at the age of 19. God’s call in my life is palpable, humbling and full of HIS GRACE. My life is not mine to make choices about. I seek the Lord’s will for all I do in my life and I seek HIS strength to work with clients, still, and he gives me the GRACE and strength to do that despite all challenges, in this grief, my body wracked with pain as is my soul and my psyche. When I love, it is so deeply and so completely.
God’s GRACE is the reason I know I will be sustained to fulfill my work and my calling. I “walk by faith, not by sight.”
I am devastated. I am suffering so. I miss you. I loved you so very deeply. You were worthy despite the challenges Babe. You deserved to live on, I am so broken up that you didn’t know that or couldn’t believe that.
This feels like it is totally completely wrecking me. It has taken my body hostage, my soul is bereft, my heart aches and there is no escape, no way to run, no place to run or hide from this, still, at times, daily, acute longing, aching pain. I write this bawling as if you will read these words as I type, from heaven. I hope you don’t see my pain now. I don’t want that for you. Rest in peace precious.
I hope I didn’t fail you. I was not abandoning you. Sweet “B.B”, sweet “B.B” I want to scream for the rest of my days for you, for what happened to you for how you never knew yourself, for how you just couldn’t hold the love I had for you.
Rest well my love. Rest well. Rest in the glorious healing peaceful rest of God’s GRACE-filled presence where all is love. I hope you will know now somehow, how much I truly loved you, totally, completely, deeply, so much it feels like this pain will not ever lessen. I love you. I love you and I do understand that you did the best you could with that but that you feared as equally as you tried to hold my love. I forgive you. I love you. It hurts so much I can’t stand it right now.
You weren’t just beautiful, with such a warm engaging smile, (it betrayed your pain, pain I wish you could have shared) you were as beautiful deep inside under all that pain and woundedness. I will find a way to honour you. I will find a way to help others out of my unending love for you, for the rest of my days.
Despite everything, sweet, sweet, “B.B.” I am learning from it all and it will help me help others. The GRACE in the agony is again, is always, the Lord’s work and awesome wonder.
I am so broken. I am open in those broken lonely, utterly unrelenting places. Once in a while beloved, I see a little sunlight there, I forge ahead in hours of every day. As for hours of every day I also twist and turn inside in gut-wrenching ways longing for you and among all emotions, longing like hell to stroke your hair, to hear your laugh, to see you and hold you just once more. To just sit with you. To receive your lovingly cooked meals and so much more. No wonder, I can’t eat right now. I don’t want to. I try, but, as hungry as my soul is that you were still here, my body is not hungry in its breaking down under the weight, literally, and the weight of the ubiquitous unending grieving and longing for you to be here.
I am sorry that I could not save you. I am so sorry. “B.B” no matter all the feelings between my love and longing for you right now, please know, I loved you and I love you still and always will and I long now … long so much for the time when I can reclaim memories that will comfort, memories of times we laughed, of times we shared joy. The memories of all that you did so wonderfully, givingly well out of a love that you weren’t able to believe in that was inside of you. A love that did flow from you that I never knew until after you were gone, in retrospect was so painful and scary for you as to consume you in ways you hid so well but that I am now aware of looking back. God, I would have helped you had you voiced any of that agony that you kept internalizing.
I so long for those memories to break through the depths of my grief right now. Complex frozen grief that no matter how I feel I am growing around it, at times, I feel as if you are right there, dying in front of me, in a soul-hole wounded cry for help that gave way to you killing yourself. I didn’t get to say goodbye. I was right there feet from you – the struggle, I forgive you for that. I know that was out of your control. I am left feeling I should have been able to save you. You didn’t want to be saved did you? You were so totally all in, far down that “tunnel of suicide” – you didn’t seem to have any doubts as you took each swift action that you did. I hated that physical struggle with you, but, I had to live, I had to fight for my life. I just had to do that. I hope that is understood where you are now. I am and was almost too gentle to fight that fight. I almost lost that fight. Again, the GRACE of God saw to what his will was for me then and there. I am sorry for having to fight with you for my life. I am sorry for that but I had to.
You knocked me down with a force I didn’t think you could possibly have as you then chose not to lunge at me, to leave me, to turn, go a few feet away, then turn to torture me with your last actions. I fought hard. In the middle there for a few seconds, you could have taken me, taken my life, you turned, instead away. I have survivor’s guilt. God.
Then as soon as I could regain my feet and try to lunge toward you, to save you, to stop you from taking your life, you were right there, but you weren’t there because you were gone, gone, lifeless, and my world just started spinning. Disbelief. Shock. Horror. Traumatized. Cut and bleeding myself, so much blood everywhere, I don’t want to see that anymore.
I have just a few brief seconds seen your spirit, I have seen that you are now okay, what a gift. It is both relieving and re-wounding as my mind flashes from that last second of your life and all that I saw to that vision – those brief few flashes of our spirits seeing beyond in a way that I know is real.
I long to see you as you were before those last, was it 5 minutes? I don’t know. I may never be able to get clear about that. Please know that as I fought you off for my own life, I did not want you to take yours. You spared me, I saw that. God, why couldn’t I have stopped you?
From the depth of my weeping soul, right now, I see it all again, and again, but I see glimpses of you, before, in life, in all that we shared. I am fighting hard to get back to those memories.
And, I thank God I can still work in his service with clients and in the other ways I do that. God is good. No matter what, God is good. Through Jesus Christ out Lord and Saviour, soonI hope to be open enough, in between the broken grief-riddled spaces inside of me to feel your beautiful spirit touch mine, I know this will happen, I do. I long for that as that is all that is possible now.
Rest in peace Babe. Rest in the splendid wholeness of being free of all the pain you knew in this life – the pain that drove you to end your precious life my sweet.
One day again, in time, in God’s time, again, I know we will meet. I have “miles to go before i sleep …” It will be a great deal of time I believe. But what is time between eternal souls?
Excerpt from: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock By T.S. Eliot – the last four stanzas
Another Video I doid on BPD and Suicide Previous to Losing my Partner this way:
September 4, 2017
