About believing in yourself

Hi, my name is Emily and I am a borderliner.

"Borderliner" means having borderline personality disorder (hereafter shortened to PD), also known as emotionally unstable PD. I was diagnosed with it at 22, and being so gave me a lot of answers about how I "work", what makes me think, react or feel the way I do, seemingly out of my control all of it. A few years of good therapy and finally finding medication that worked has made me a lot "better". That's the good part of it being diagnosed "early", you can work your way out of it, at least to some extent.

But I will never be miraculously cured, it'll never be completely gone. Having developed this PD has influenced my life and personality to such an extent that it will always be with me. And in some way I'm even thankful for it - having gone through this therapy has taught me so much about myself, my family, about social interaction, about roles, about human psychology, about life in general. It has also made me more aware of what goes on inside my head, given me more insight into myself - for better or worse I suppose.

Being a borderliner means hating yourself. Doubting yourself and your self worth, being convinced that everyone around you dislikes you, or if they by some miracle dont despise you they will leave you eventually when they get sick of you. All you can focus on are the things you can't do, your failures, your shortcomings, the things that went wrong. Every human has to deal with poor self-confidence to a lesser or greater extent, but borderliners pushes it to the extreme and turns self-destruction into a sport. And of course, all the things they think about themselves eventually becomes true. Because who can bear to be with someoen that self-destructive and depressed in the long run? Their excessive focus on all the things they fail to do becomes so prevalent they become unable to do anything at all. They lash out at people as a form of self-defense, and are impossible to relate to. And if they do let you in, let anyone come close, they hang on for dear life until they smother that person to death. An evil downward spiral, a self-fulfilling prophecy and a catch 22.

The fact that I am aware of these things in itself means that I have come a long way. Being mindful of your own destructive thoughts and how they do nothing but push you further down is one of the key aspects of having this PD that borderliners need to figure out. Because what good does it actually do anyone to beat yourself up that badly? It will never help you or motivate you to change your situation, it will never enable you to do the right thing, all it will is make you feel more depressed and worthless. The day you stop beating yourself up about all the things you didn't manage that day and in stead focus on having a new chance tomorrow, that is the day you start makign progress.

Now, I have become so much "better" that I started school. I've finished two years of my bachelor degree in nursing and just started my third and final year. But the fact that I am still at it, without failing an exam or without dropping out, is frankly a bleedin' miracle. One would think that a university where more or less all the teachers are nurses with many years working experience is the last place where you would hear phrases like "oh but you have a mental history, you can't be a nurse." And I have been told that. In many different ways. I was threatened to leave my first internship, otherwise they would fail me. "The patients have enough to cope with, they don't need your problems as well."

You could ask why on earth I decided to go into such a intense and social occupation where you get very close to people, when I probably have more than enough things to deal with on my own. And I'm not even going to argue, it's a valid point. But I have grown up around illness all my life - my mum had heavy asthma all her life that eventually took her life 13 years ago, I've been plagued with bad mental and physical health all my life, and my best friend whom I only got to know for 4 years had cancer three times. My mum was also very passionate about helping the weak ones in the society, she worked with mentally and physically disabled people and taught me from a very early age to have respect and compassion for people who are different in any way.

My most important argument for wanting to become a nurse is that I want to help people, because I find meaning in it. Being a nurse means that you can come into work when having a bad or just very boring day, and make a difference in someone elses life. I can make them feel better, heal them, help them, make someone smile, and when I do I forget about myself for a while, about my own troubles. It puts life in perspective and reminds me that my life has a meaning, that I am here for a reason.

Despite having had people reassuring me that I am a good person, having grateful patients who has told me I am a good nurse, the nagging doubt stays. Should I become a nurse? After my traumatic first internship, where I was basically told that I should find myself another occupation pronto and was told how unlikeable I was, that nagging doubt has always been there. When I started school I was "just" worried about whether or not I was going to make it through school, and I frankly didn't consider my own abilities. I've proved to myself that I can make it through school, but what about life after school? I don't have any ambitions (that word again..) of working full time, I honestly doubt that I will be able to, I need time to myself and social interactions can make me pretty exhausted, plus keeping general upkeep in my own head takes more time than it does for the "sane" person. But what if my personality disorder is so obvious and bad that I just can't do it.

People are generally better at seeing the limitations than seeing the possibilities in situations. And I absolutely hate how much this diagnose, with all it entales, have limited me. In an ideal world where I still had my mum and my best friend, and no history of depressions or mental problems, where could I have been, what would my life have been like? But there is a part of me that doesn't want to believe that this diagnose limits me. That just refuses to accept that fact. "Damn it, I can become a nurse and a damn good one," it says. I wholeheartedly believe that people who has been through rough times, depressions, personal loss and trauma, are better equipped to show genuine understanding and empathy. Some things you just can't learn through reading it in a book. And I also believe that those who have struggled, but who can put it behind them, or learn to live with it, and can find a way to use it for something good; those people become the best nurses. But will I be able to put it behind me, or at least learn to live with it?

I realise that I can be moody, and that I am very much an "individual", and can be viewed as an odd one. I have particular interests that aren't necessarily of the most feminine persuasion, I dress funny and I have my own opinions. And I don't expect everyone to love me, or even like me, because that will never happen. But the impression I got from my first internship was basically that I was a horribly unpleasant and unlikeable individual, to such an extent that I would never be a nurse. And the borderliner within me can't help but wonder if maybe they are right, and that I have a major blind spot where I thought I had some insight into myself and how people view me.

Keeping myself motivated, staying positive and believing in myself is hard in the best of times. Lacking a major support system makes it even harder - my family are practical realists who are a lot better at pointing out the limitations than seeing the beforementioned possibilities, and I don't have a pile of friends around me offering me support. (But, the few I do have are probably the ones keeping me going <3) Add in the fact that my own teachers and mentors at school as well as my case worker at the employment department are questioning my capability to be a nurse as well, and it becomes apparent that me still being in school is a miracle. Sometimes I think the only reason I'm still at it because I just can't face another failure, I just can't give up on something one more time. If I did it would be the death of me. And if I did, Mats would make lightning strike me down. Repeatedly. I have to finish this, so I can say that I have at least finished something.

There are probably as many opinions of what makes up a good nurse as there are nurses around - people value different traits and abilities differently. Nurses can have such a huge array of jobs, from psychiatry to geriatrics to working in an ambulance or behind a desk. The fact that it is so hard to define what makes up a good nurse, and that there are so many ways of performing this occupations, is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand it is impossible to measure whether or not I am a good nurse through what feedback I get from other people, because what will get you praise and approval one place might get you trouble in another place. Some value efficiency and keeping the time schedule, some value good patient contact, some value good medical care. On the other hand, the fact that it is such a diverse occupation must mean that I will be able to do it in some form or another? And I just have to keep believing that somewhere out there is a place who will want me, a place where I could do a good job and make a difference in people's lives, despite my obvious limitations.