I had lunch with my youngest daughter today. And while I enjoyed seeing her, it was painful for me to find out that she had hurt herself purposely last night.
You see, she suffers from BPD, a.k.a. Borderline Personality Disorder. And through her, I learned after all of these years, that I pretty much grew up with the same mental illness. It most of the time comes from traumatic experiences in ones younger years of life.
At this time, I won't go into those details, but I will say that I totally understand her illness, and she comes to me with everything, because she trusts me, and she knows I will do whatever it takes to help her, even if it involves getting her to check in to a hospital because she may be spiraling out of control and could potentially commit suicide at any given time. I live through these episodes periodically with her, and it is the scariest thing ever. I can't imagine what it would do to me if one day she was actually successful.
So she tells me the minute I get into my car to drive us to lunch, as she starts crying that last night she hurt herself. In the past, she use to cut herself and watch herself bleed. This time, she actually took a lighter and held it to her wrist and just watched it burn. She seriously has a 3rd degree burn on her wrist. I am sad, I am angry, I have so many emotions going on. One thing I do know, is that I absolutely do not have any desire to pick up a cigarette and smoke. This would have caused me to both drink and smoke at the same time in the past. This is how I know I will never smoke again. I haven't even found myself out of habit wanting to partake in smoking. I feel as if I have not smoked in forever, even though I am only on day 46. I am no longer even taking my Wellbutrin either. I just know I am done forever! I even bent over to kiss her cheek as she sat in her car getting ready to leave my office, and there sat her Vape machine. It meant nothing to me to see that there, only that I wish she didn't smoke it. But it's most likely better for her than the dreaded cigarette and the poison that they have in them.
Now, going home tonight, to an empty house, I must start thinking of what I need to do for my daughter! She is 22, and a beautiful girl, who does not deserve to suffer with this mental illness. But today she fed me a bit of information, that I have never heard from her before, in regards to what her traumatic experience may have been as a young child.
Please keep my daughter in your prayers, and pray for strength for me to get through another episode. That is all I ask! I just need her to be able to have a peaceful life....
Thanks!
Sandy
