Hey there. I'm sorry I didn't respond to your post sooner, but I've been away for a week or so.

I'm sorry to hear about your younger sister. That must have been a really hard situation for your family and for you and for your younger sister as well. I guess I think that... I really think that the word 'manipulative' isn't helping much. There are specific things that your younger sister did that you disaproved of... Verbally abusing others is unacceptable behaviour, for example. Maybe... She never really learned how to appropriately express anger and frustration?

It is hard to gain insight into 'BPD thinking' because people with BPD are a diverse group of people. I once calculated that there were... 256 different ways to meet the dx criteria for BPD. Oftentimes with dx there is more variability between people with the same dx than there is between people of different dx's etc. But that being said one thing that does seem to crop up fairly consistently in the case of BPD is PAIN and SUFFERING. That is turned inwards (self destructive acts) and outwards (other destructive acts incl. verbal abuse towards others etc).

People often find it really hard to understand emotional (aka 'borderline') logic... To understand what is going on in the persons mind. I don't know if you have ever gotten into an intensely distressing emotional state and then done things that you later regret? Sometimes life can be a little like that. Drugs help dull and numb the intense emotions but drugs have their own consequences (where all your money goes on them, when the drugs wear off and you would give anything for that next hit, where you have to live through the withdrawal etc).

It can be really hard to love someone who is in such great pain. Especially when they seem to be doing everything they can to push others away by their lashing out etc. Have you ever seen an animal in pain? If you shock a monkey it will turn and bite the monkey next to it. Animals (and people) in pain do have a greater tendency to lash out in sheer frustration. But how to make it better? It can be so damned hard...

I've been told that I was misdiagnosed (in hindsight). I refuse to believe that because I would like to offer hope to others. I prefer to describe myself as someone who met criteria at age 18 and no longer met criteria at age 26. Never mind the 'it will mellow in your fourties' ********. I'm not magically all better, not by a long shot. But the episodes of intense pain and self and other destructive acts are fewer and further between. I was very lucky indeed to get into therapy with a therapist I liked very much who had a theory (DBT) that I respected very much.

There are others in the world who weren't so lucky.

And I... Could well have been them.

I just heard yesterday that one of my friends (who suffered from depression) killed himself. Death... The absence of pain and suffering and fear and violence and desperate longing. Not to glorify it (death will come soon enough) but... The absence of those things... I hope they found peace.

I hope all of us do.