I don't know why I feel the need to do this. Perhaps for some understanding, perhaps just to vent some old feelings, but here I go. Maybe it will explain my need to try to help and my inability to read a lot of the threads at the present time.

My mom is undiagnosed BPD. I have no doubt she is and she was kind enough to give it to me. While I was in college, for three solid years, she sent me a letter almost everyday. Long letters...4 and 5 pages long. On a lucky day I received two. They were always the same old mantra: how unhappy she was and how I'd abandoned her to attend school and had no intention of returning, and was a horrible child because of it. When I returned home from college I purposely didn't leave again save a year in Texas trying to prove her wrong.

I threw out the vast majority of these letters about 5 years ago...enough letters to fill a liquor box. But luck would have it, I came across one and did the unwise thing and read it. Those of you who are parents, imagine sending something akin to this to your 18 year old child who just left home everyday. Oh...and my dad was not a bad person. A bit gruff and he'd tell you like he saw it, but not bad. He was often compared to Archie Bunker. He was her scapegoat of all of the world's problems. She never blamed herself for her feelings or how she treated me or my siblings.

Taken from the letter:
"I don't complain about anything because he doesn't want to hear me."
"I keep everything to myself and most of the time I'm ready to go out of my mind, being alone and not having anyone to talk to; it's like being dead or half alive."
"I've tried to look ahead in life but there is nothing...."
"It doesn't seem like my children care either.....I just feel as if I don't have children."
"Getting older, you feel more, you feel alone, unloved and in the way, and never appreciated so why should I have to live to be more miserable?"
"I can't and won't say much more becaue I don't blame anyone but myself. I'm here for everyone who needs me but I have no one."
"All I hear is abuse from dad's mouth so I'm back to square one putting my head in a paper bag."

Every day for three years...and this was actually one of her more tame letters. I could never help her, I can't help you, and I can barely help myself most of the time. And when my dad died, I became "it". Within three months of his death, she she blamed me for "taking away her memories" and disowned me for things I didn't do...