The longtime reader knows that I am Borderline in addition to ASPD and psychopathic.  (For a detailed picture of what this looks like, I direct the reader to the book, Evil Genes).  My Borderline facets are on the wane these days, thankfully, and aside from the occasional splitting – alternation between idealization and demonization of another – and black and white thinking, I more or less have this facet of my personality under wraps.  This is a good thing.  As devastating as ASPD can be to an individual caught in an interpersonal relationship with us, the Borderline dynamics with another can be as severe or worse.  I’ve been called ableist for such views, but having suffered with the worst of the condition, I feel confident that I speak truth.  Sometimes the truth is hard to swallow, but it must be nonetheless.

The suicide baiting, having access cut off to friends in family out of another’s fear of abandonment, and other overtly manipulative tendencies of the Borderline are often too much for another to handle.  Rather than the cold impersonal nature that drives an ASPD individual’s sins, the Borderline’s trespasses are overtly personal.  People are left in the lurch wondering if today will be the day that their partner bleeds out from self-harm, whether they’ll really get to go visit friends like they planned, or whether they’ll be subject to a torrent of emotional abuse.  ASPD is not the only disorder in which caution must be exercised by those entering an interpersonal relationship with the afflicted.

I don’t believe that everyone is entitled to friends or paramours.  I know my kind all too well and what we can do to those around us, and being Borderline, I know those facets that can ruin a person far more quickly than any physical battering can do.  I’ve done my time in therapy, and even now, I wonder whether I am worthy of the interpersonal relationships that I have.  I do know one thing, however.  I am far more worthy than those that have not put in the time to make their lives and the lives of those around them better.  This isn’t ableism, this is reality.