I used to be obsessed with The Picture of Dorian Grey. You know, the Oscar Wilde book. The concept of a painting in an attic holding all your sins and mistakes gave me a sense of hope, I guess. A hope that all the ugly things that live in my soul that sometimes appear on my face would be kept somewhere safe. Where they couldn’t hurt anybody.

I live with Borderline Personality Disorder. BPD is a cluster B personality disorder, and by the definition of the DSM 5, is:

“A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by 5 or more of the following:

1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation
3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self
4. Impulsivity in at least 2 areas that are potentially self-damaging, for example, spending, substance abuse, reckless driving, sex, or binge eating
5. Recurrent suicidal behaviour, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behaviour
6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood, for example, intense episodic dysphoria, anxiety, or irritability, usually lasting a few hours and rarely more than a few days
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness
8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger, for example, frequent displays of temper, constant anger, or recurrent physical fights
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.”

I present with 8 of these factors. Years of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy means it’s mostly kept safe in the attic, as I make sure to distance myself from situations that my dumb ass brain can’t handle. I’ve been single for 8 years because that’s one area that my dumb ass brain gets really dumb about. My marriage – written about in excruciating detail on this very platform – is a lesson in how dumb.

So, I’ve stayed single. Single and safe.

Then I made the mistake of falling for a friend.

This friend, who I’ll call S, has been in my life for over 15 years and is a kind, generous, accepting person. He treats me with respect and deference, doesn’t judge my insane behaviour traits, and doesn’t treat me like I’m fragile. So, of course, over time, I fell hard.

Now, I’m desperately afraid of making myself vulnerable to people I like, so I just let it be what it was and enjoyed the friendship. I put my feelings and all the messy stuff associated with them in the attic, in the picture, where they were safe. Where I was safe.

But then I had a health scare (I’m fine now), and the picture started rattling in its frame. I ignored it, and it rattled harder. I started to pay attention to the picture, the one in the attic, where everything was hidden away and safe, and let it influence my everyday life. I convinced myself that something was there in my friendship, and the picture rattled and rattled and rattled.

I let it out. I let the painting’s colours run and I ran with my feelings and I told S that I was into him.

He rejected me. Gently, and with grace, but a rejection nonetheless.

I did not respond in kind.

The door to the attic opened. The stairs creaked as my painting crept down them, vibrating with its spiky sickness. All hell broke loose as my picture, the one kept in the attic where it was safe, the one that held my ugliness and disordered thinking toppled down the creaky stairs and landed on me with a crash.

Overwhelming feelings of shame, humiliation, worthlessness and defeat settled over me like a weighted blanket of doom. I’m suffocating beneath it as I call my sister, desperate for air and some sense of calm. She does her best, asking me what happened, asking if he was mean.

I said no, he was not mean. He’s a lovely guy. He just doesn’t love me.

And that’s the crux of it. He doesn’t love me because I’m unlovable. I’ve been told that all my life in various ways.

My mother: “I love you because I have to but I don’t like you.”

My brother in jest: “I’ve been thinking and I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re a bitch.”

My father: “You came to Australia and became my problem.”

An ex-boyfriend, succinctly: “Your dad is mean to you because you’re hard to love.”

The same ex-boyfriend: “I don’t want to have kids with you because they’ll get your mental illness.”

My ex-wife: “You’re too sick to love.”

S said none of this. Of course he said none of this. But the picture, the one kept in the attic where it’s safe, the picture shows me all this, plain as can be on its mottled, mouldy canvas. And because it’s there, paint and blood and tears all smeared together and startlingly obvious, I believed it.

Google tells me that “Romantic rejection for individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) often triggers intense, volatile, and devastating emotional reactions due to extreme abandonment fears.”

It’s entirely accurate. It is extreme. Unreasonable, even, to feel what I’m feeling right now. I wish I could switch it off, get over it, stuff it back in the painting and put it back in the attic where it’s safe. But I can’t. Even after 30 years of therapy, it’s the one thing I haven’t got a handle on.

Let me be clear, I know there is nothing wrong with having feelings for someone. I also know there’s nothing wrong with expressing those feelings to that someone. People do it every day and the world doesn’t end. There doesn’t need to be this drama and chaos and calamity. It’s all fine.

But, unfortunately, for me it’s not all fine. It triggers something in my brain that is viscous and vicious and gross and I don’t understand exactly why. Psychiatrists aplenty have told me why over the years, and I get it intellectually. But emotionally? Well, that’s a different monster. A monster that I pour into a picture. That I keep in the attic. To keep it safe.

But now, it has affected a friendship that is extremely valuable to me. Not because of his reaction, but because of mine. I made myself vulnerable and now I’m paying the price.

So, I’ve pulled away for now. I’ve rejected him back, even though he tells me our friendship is safe. It’s not safe for me anymore because I’ve made it not safe. And now, he has to bear the brunt of my fucked up brain that can’t handle the fullness of life.

I don’t want pity. There’s nothing to pity. That picture of me that holds all my disease and discomfort isn’t pitiable. It’s dangerous and violent and unfit for human consumption.

So S, I’ll say this here because I’m too much of a coward to say it to your face: You did nothing wrong. I’m pulling away because I need to make myself safe again. I’m doing the one thing I said I’d never do, but I’m doing it to keep you safe, too. I’m sorry I ruined it. This – all this – is why I ruined it.

That picture. The one in the attic. Kept there to keep it safe. To keep it hidden from the world, hidden from you so I can go on pretending that I’m a fully functioning human being. That’s why.