Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms - Chronic Emptiness

Welcome to the BPD symtpoms series! Today we're talking about chronic emptiness, which a quick google search defines as;

Feelings of emptiness—a lack of meaning or purpose—are experienced by most people at some point in life. However, chronic feelings of emptiness, feelings of emotional numbness or despair, and similar experiences may be symptomatic of other mental health concerns, such as depression

Emptiness is something I've felt for a long time during my mental health struggles, and something that will always return to me, hence the chronic. I didn't know what I was feeling when I was younger, I just felt this overwhelming sense of dread and doom, this numbness throughout my whole body that I couldn't put into words if I tried. At the time I would deal with it badly, self-harming to try and get some feelings I desperately craved back to me, I didn't understand that this emotion would come and go as part of my disorder, back then I didn't eve know I had a disorder, all I knew was this feeling would haunt me, and I couldn't cope with it.

And I still get that numbness now, this feeling like nothing is real, that I can't think or move, only feel this emotion wash over me. My boyfriend says he can see it happening as much as I can feel it begin to happen, he sees me disappear, my emotions, my personality, my entire being just slowly slipping away into nothingness, as if the lights are on, but no one's home. But to me, even the lights are out, I am left a hollow shell of nothingness, unable to do anything but wait. Wait for it to pass, for it all to be over. 

It does pass. Eventually. I begin to feel the light wash back over me, the feelings returning to my body, thoughts and words rush back into my head waiting to be said aloud. Emotions my regular self feels slowly tingling back throughout me. But I know it will return. I know soon, in a few hours or a few days, this nothingness will dawn back on me, and disable me from doing anything but feeling it right down to my bones. And I will lay there, and feel it, staring into space wondering when it will all be over once more. 

Feeling "empty" or your own version of "empty" (this can vary from borderline to borderline in how they deal and suffer with the disorder), can feel like staring into the abyss, waiting for someone or something to drag you back up to shore, to feel the air in your lungs and the sun on your skin once more. It's hard to explain to someone what this feels like other than in deep and slightly obnoxious metaphors, but it's a real feeling that many of us dread to encounter in our days. 

All I ask during these times, if you have a borderline friend who tells you they are feeling emptiness or numbness, is that you be kind. We are trying, but we are fighting an invisible and untouchable enemy. Remind us that these moments, although dark and painful, are also fleeting and will pass, we will come out of this and feel the warmth once more, that it's okay to feel empty, and sad, and hopeless. But this will pass, and it will be okay. 

Meg x