I'm 59, and have been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder
Check Wikipedia. Essentially it's like post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of constant fear of death when I was tiny. My parents and only brother are dead, and I now live alone
My father and brother both drank heavily, and I am certain that my father had the same problem. He was petty and spiteful, and would burst into tears if my mum suggested that she go for a day out with her friends from work. Her day at the zoo would end with him curled up on the sofa, sobbing, with his head in her arms
For many years I was diagnosed with simple alcoholism. Everything was supposed to be okay if I simply stopped my indulgence. I bought into that and hated myself when I drank
I married in 1984, after seven years of dating. Somehow I picked a girl who hated sex and, even though it was she who proposed to me, she was badly sick on our honeymoon night, and it was a while before we made love
We had three daughters. I think she gritted her teeth, but she's not a communicator and I suspect that emotion of any sort (except, it turned out, for hatred) is shameful for her. She had the equipment and I had the sperm, and she managed to control her nausea. Result: babies, whom I always adored and bathed and kissed and hugged, but her angle was to tell the world that they were an accident. I never understood that
She has this mantra, that "children are people too". I wouldn't consider disagreeing with that, but I always countered that "people are people too".
As soon as Jennifer and Catherine had enough years to become personalities, all love that had been there for eight or nine years vanished. She wanted rid of the guy that she had proposed to.
Fast forward, I still have BPD, but the best that the NHS can do leave me with such anxiety that it's like I'm up for trial every day, and I have no one who will say "this guy's okay" which is all that I need
So, yeah, the question. I know when I'm feeling particularly bad, and avoid inflicting any moodiness on any of my kids. I send them birthday and Christmas cards, but it's becoming harder to know what they would like now that Jennie's thirty. And sometimes I redouble my efforts to explain whom I am, what my feelings are, and that my endless terror is nothing that I have chosen for myself either
And then it all explodes, because I have invested everything I have to get them to understand that, hey, I love you to bits, but I live in fear and don't often come over well
I could understand a lot if I had been as dismissive and spiteful as my father. One night he came into my room just to say, "Your mum does better than me. To me you're just another man that I don't want in my house. I was about twelve.
I'm sorry for such a long and unusual post, and I hope it doesn't sound like a whinge. People's lives are complicated, and I felt that I should say enough that you got a flavour without me implying a diagnosis.
I'm sure I will be told to shut up, as well as being asked for more information. As long as those two categories are about equal I think I will have struck the balance that I sought.
Thanks, all of you.