A Perspective That Allows for (Self-)Compassion

        First off, this is not meant to be accusatory nor an excuse. It was always my responsibility to honor my truth and to seek appropriate treatments for my struggle(s) with mental health. Secondly, I am writing this more to give myself grace than to ask for grace from others. Although, I do hope it helps create a cleaner break should you decide we part ways.
        Discovering the likelihood that I have BPD has led me to second guess my feelings and my interpretation of everything, which is good. I should have been more willing to question my perspective. With that in mind, a part of me feels as though I loved you enough to allow your opinion* to replace my truth. 
        Society, all too often, focuses on 1 proverbial taproot and ignores the other one by looking at the question: "What do you get from this behavior?" I feel that this over-simplifies my battle by making it a matter of will-power. This question makes my fight out to be something it wasn't...it makes it out to be easy. When I finally agreed** that the fight was an easy one, I dropped my guard all the way down and my unhealthy brain was given free reign.
       I was never seeking attention. I was seeking connection in an unbalanced way. I felt a profound need to re-establish or re-solidify the belief that I was loved and cared for and to do so far too frequently. This was directly related to the conviction I held of my unlovability. Attempting to believe in my deservingness of unconditional love feels like trying to believe in Santa Clause again.
        Attempting to keep the pain (of remorse) a secret caused a great deal of cognitive dissonance/dysregulation which has erased my short term memory at times. Cognitive dissonance can cause dysregulation which can then trigger an age regression. At no point could my will-power kick in because my pre-frontal cortex is still under-developed. At no point could my will-power kick in because it did not yet have the necessary scaffolding, something I can gain through Dialectical Behavior Therapy.
       

*about the status of my mental health & my supposed ability to override the brain injury that CPTSD truly is. And I can...in time. But first I had to acknowledge it and name it.

**I agreed because I desperately wanted the resolution to be easy. I wanted it to just be about will-power.