Hi everyone,

I just joined the forum. I'm not sure how to do this, as I'm not very good at interacting with people in real life either, so I'll start...

I am a diagnosed bipolar, but believe this diagnosis is incorrect and I'm actually struggling with what would be consider symptoms of borderline personality disorder. I do not have a trauma in my childhood that I know of, but I have suffered from severe emotional instability since the early childhood. My mood swings are random, happen often (within hours) and are almost always triggered by the introduction of external factors and stressful situations. I also struggle with substance abuse, although it's mainly just fuel to the fire when I'm already struggling.

I'm here because my feelings of self-disgust and suicidal ideation have become unbearable. I am certain I was a victim of a crime, but everyone I've spoken, including my friends, therapist, psychiatrist, family members, lawyer, etc. have all concluded I'm overreacting, like I often do. I am very confused, not sure what to do, distrust almost everyone around me.

I tried dating someone back when I was in high school, fell in love, and stayed with them, dropped out of college to be with them, sabotaged everything in the name of Romanticism. As that relationship continued, my bouts of self-destructive behavior became unbearable for my partner. I severely hurt her emotionally with my problems, to the point that I swore to myself I would never try to date again.

12 years later, I broke down out of loneliness and the need for physical intimacy, thinking I could somehow handle casual dating in my 30s, and almost immediately found out this wasn't possible. The person I slept with, the first since my high school girlfriend, immediately started pushing the L word on me, even though I insisted that I wasn't comfortable being in a relationship. She said she was okay with that, but said "I love you, but I'm not in love with you." She became increasingly controlling and verbally abusive as I tried to distance myself. I eventually tried to end the relationship on multiple occasions, noting the severe decline in my own mental health as the reason. Every time she said we could just be friends, that I was her only friend (which may have been true, as I never met any of her friends), etc.

Things soon became drastically worse. I started binge drinking again and taking on other forms of self-harm. I started having little to no awareness of the times I actually hung around her due to alcohol and drug consumption. I was aware that she was continuing to have sex with me even after I was no longer able to understand what exactly was happening. She would complain about me passing out during sex, or not being able to achieve an erection. It's also possible she attempted intercourse when I was completely unconscious, as the few times I assumed we had sex, I just woke up, she was in my bed, and I was missing my clothes. On the brief occasions when I was lucid, I made it clear that I didn't want to continue having sex, and I needed help, possibly treatment in a hospital. On those occasions she became enraged, and physically abusive the last time when I said no. She continued to do the same thing when I was not lucid.

She soon after informed me she was pregnant. I had explained all my mental health issues to her when we first met, explained how I didn't want kids because I wasn't comfortable around them and couldn't care for them, but she insisted I was being selfish. She started referring to herself as part of my family. When I reiterated that I no longer wanted to see her, that I needed help, she started demanding thousands of dollars from me to terminate the pregnancy, essentially every penny I had. When I didn't pay, she started accusing me of sleeping with someone else, physically assaulted me again (worse this time, hit me in the head with a bottle and shoved me on the ground), and I cut ties with her immediately, seeking help from a psych hospital for my own issues at the time.

Now I'm being sued for child support, and everyone is telling me the law supports everything she did. Apparently even if I was legally raped, I have no rights. I am currently on disability and have no ability to care for a child due to my own mental health problems, yet they claim I need to pay all this money to this woman.

I genuinely feel that I was taken advantage of, and possibly sexually assaulted repeatedly, by this woman so she could get pregnant and use this to maintain control over me, or just get revenge because I tried to push her away. The problem is that I know when I'm depressed, lonely and often when I'm blacked out drunk, I get very needy. I reviewed texts and it appears, in between suicide threats, that I was even asking for it.

Are all these other people right? Is this just another one of my delusions? I feel traumatized by this, feel deep down that this person raped me, obsess over it, have nightmares about her finding me and hurting me further. I just don't understand how there's no law to protect us from people like this, so it's driving me crazy whether or not this is real or just a figment of my own continual problems.

I know I'm at fault for asking for it, choosing to go on drinking benders when she had access to me, so I also have trouble shaking that this is my fault, mainly because everyone else is telling me I need to take responsibility and stop blaming her. People mainly have trouble understanding why I can't be around kids. I am incredibly uncomfortable around children, and don't know why, and feel no connection at all to this child (although I do worry about her hurting the child as well).

I know that legally no one can help me, but I've otherwise given up on living and lost everything (which wasn't much). I'm dealing with a nearly unbearable amount of pain, and just want to know if I'm delusional or not, I feel crazy the way other people are making it seem like I did something wrong or asked for this. Did I ask for this or possibly even deserve it because of my emotional volatility?