I'm the great pretender...

[NotquiteaDevilbuthardlyaSaint]

Name changed for this as previous posts are revealing.
I have borderline personality disorder due to severe childhood abuse. To the outside world I am confident, intelligent and successful with a professional career and great social life. I also volunteer with a well known helpline in my free time. Everyone comments on how far I've came and how wonderful I am as my sister has went the opposite way and is a drug user.
Problem is. I'm not okay. I feel empty the majority of the time when I'm not empty i am lonely and bitter about my life. I've had two years of therapy and my psychologist thinks I'm fine. Again... I'm not.
I hate myself, my life and having to go through the motions trying to make my life meaningful enough to take away this emptiness. Nothing I do fixes it.
I cant talk to my friends as they worship me as the 'most together person they know' despite knowing my condition.
I feel like the great pretender. Had to leave my helpline shift today as it was all getting to much. Drove home in tears listening to the Freddie mercury song thinking this is the web of lies I've created and cant see a way out. I needed to tell someone I'm not ok. It's all a farce. I'm trying to make myself better with all this bullshit but it's not helping!

I felt how you did.
I happened to come across ‘complex ptsd’ it was a lightbulb moment. I realised all those negative feelings I had (anger, guilt, despair, resentment etc etc) were actually normal and were never actually going to go away.
As soon as I started to acknowledge this it literally felt like a great weight went from shoulders and my head started to clear. The past will never go away and I will never accept why it happened to me. But I will acknowledge it did happen and none of it was my fault and I am allowed to feel negatively about it. I’ve stopped trying to ‘fix’ myself. And strangely by doing that I felt more contented.
I also opened up a bit to a couple of people I trusted.
I have up and down days but for me allowing myself to have those feelings really helped and the dark times aren’t as dark.
I don’t know if any of what I have said helps but I want you to know you aren’t alone. I hope you can take some time out to look after yourself and find the peace you deserve.

I could have written your post, and the hardest thing is having to pretend. It leaves me exhausted both physically and mentally. I can't talk to anyone either and have had to accept that ( most) people just don't see life as I do.
I've not really found anything that makes it better, only acknowledging that I have to be here for the kids and its my "job". That is the only reason I'm here still.
I've had counselling too, but it doesn't work with the emptiness. I guess I'm just saying you're not alone

The fact that you have recognised that you need help is tremendous. I think you are further on than you give yourself credit for. Not to negate your post.

Thank you all for your kind comments. It certainly helps that I'm not alone. Hope you are all having a good day
Most days I do cope well with my condition and the trauma of my childhood but I guess everything just gets on top of me sometimes and I just want to scream and cry. The emptiness is horrible. It is the hardest thing of all my symptoms to deal with and most destructive when I desperately overcompensate to try to fill it.
Mental illness sucks.

Please stop pretending you agree okay. Tell your psychologist and tell your friends. They won't think badly of you.

I know someone who used to be a sister on a mental health ward who has been sectioned 19 times in her life. She also comes across as the most 'together' person I know. She has a number of issues including Borderline Personality Disorder. I don't want her to pretend to be okay if she isn't. I want to be able to help or get help for her if she needs it.

It's ok to fall apart, it really is. The part of you that is continuing in the role of pretense is fed up now and wants to stop. Which is understandable as from what you have written here it is clearly taking a lot of you to keep it up. Pretty much all of us live behind a mask, it takes a massive amount of resolve to let it drop. We have to risk being seen as flawed and not knowing what anyone else will think of us if we are not competent and coping.
Did your psychologist actually tell you you are fine? If so, perhaps it's time to either try a different therapist or go back and sit down and state all the ways in which you are not. Because that's ok too. No one needs you to be anything other than how you are. It is a difficult lesson to learn but better to learn it now.