Why have a family?
I often wonder why it is that people with mental illnesses want to have families. It’s not that I don’t think we deserve them, it’s just that we put them through so much bullcrap that it seems almost not worth it at times. I mean, my son is an amazing person. How much more amazing would he be if I weren’t borderline? That is a question that haunts me. As he grows up, will he learn to hate me and my illness? Will he understand that his mother wasn’t quite right so she might not have always reacted the way normal people would?
And your spouse…what about him/her? The hell they go through is at least as bad as the one inside our own heads. They fight every day to continue to love and support us, even though they get tired of it. Some of our relationships end in divorce, because our spouse just couldn’t take it anymore. That’s not what I want for my marriage. Then you have to deal with the torment of trying and trying to make things better, make them work for you both… and knowing that you might not ever be able to fix what’s wrong. It rips you apart every single day.
Drugs aren’t always the answer or solution, especially not with borderline patients. The sadest part is that we with mental illnesses are usually good people with messed up minds. It’s not that we are evil, vicious, malicious…all for the sake of being so. We just can’t regulate our emotions like other people. We don’t react the way “normal” people do. We don’t feel like they do. Everything is pronounced at least ten times more than normal emotion. It makes for very explosive lives.
I didn’t know how sick I was until AFTER I had my son. If I had it to do all over again, he might not have ever been born for the simple fact that I wouldn’t want him to have to deal with me, or becoming me later on in life.
Tags: family, borderline+personality+disorder, mental+illness, mental+health
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I am borderline and I desparately want children, but my husband and I can’t have kids. I figure it’s probably God’s way of letting us know that we’re not supposed to have kids due to our mental illnesses. My husband is bipolar, so if we had a kid, he/she would have to suffer through my borderline and his bipolar. I’m sure our children would grow up to be quite screwed up.