2/17/2022 Victim Blaiming or Mentality

I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder by my psychologist and therapist. I don’t quite understand it, but all I have learned and heard about it does seemingly fit the person I feel I have been for years. Other than those two, everyone in my life thinks I am a whiney, poor-me bitch that always complains the world is giving me the shaft constantly.

Of course, when I let my loved ones and friends know of this “issue” they all immediately made the decision that I was once again becoming an “attention whore”. That’s how it’s been for 3 years now. Even though I was told and I felt I had this problem, it just became unmanageable after my “break” when the marriage failed. I have written about this several times, but I have the thoughts and I need to write them. The woman who said she loved me, would never leave me, built a family with me, and was my rock, just shut me out over the course of a day. When I say to shut me out, I mean there were no tears in her blank eyes when she told me she wanted a divorce, she would move away in disgust as I would try to hold her, and she would not discuss why things were finished, other than the initial saying we were done. I turned to my sister for comfort and support and she immediately made my hurt into her problem. “You better not keep the kids from me,” she screamed at me and then sped away. Countless texts and calls went unanswered as I quickly descended into my personal Hell. I turned to my friends and heard them call her a bitch and slut and told me to deal with it. Days later I was told they didn’t want to hear me bitch and moan about it and then they stopped answering too.

And for the last 3 years, that’s how things have been. Oh, I threw myself at their mercy, apologizing that “my” drama had caused them inconvenience, and asking, begging to be included again. The invites never came and neither did holiday well wishes. Nothing.

I have been suicidal. I have wound up in the ER with panic attacks. I have been homeless and broke. Yet at no time did these people ever acknowledge my pain or loss. No hugs or shoulders to cry on. No distractions or pep talks. No Merry Christmas, Happy Thanksgiving, Happy New Year, or Happy Birthday messages. It’s just been me alone except for the occasional visits with my sons, who I can’t talk to about my hurt and loss.

Would someone who found out they have cancer be treated like this? Someone whose home burnt to the ground, would they be told to stop crying about it? Every conversation I have tried to have with those close to me get turned into “get over it” or “man up”. As I just wrote when I tried to explain my mental issue, they have just laughed it off. Yet my sister alone has supported and comforted several of her in-laws who have gone through depression, sickness, loss, and divorce, but me, nothing.

I have always tried to be open about my feelings to others. I sat with my ex as she lost her grandmother and through all the dramas with her mother and sister. I spent weeks helping and supporting my sister when her 1st husband die of cancer. I stepped up to care for my mother when no one else would when she descended into dementia. I made it a priority to be there and cheer up my 2 best friends through their divorces and heartbreaks, even allowing one of them to stay with us rent-free for weeks until he got back on his feet. I have lent money when I couldn’t afford to.

So is this victim-blaming on their part or do I truly have a victim mentality? Maybe the writing was always on the wall and I was too blind to see it about how people around me acted. Maybe my ex dropped subtle clues I just ignored. Maybe when I sat with my broken, tubed up, and in a coma and daughter and then again at her death bed without so much of a hug from people I should have known or how my sister made it all about her pain that her niece died. Yes her niece, not my daughter, because you see according to all of them I have lived a charmed life and have never felt the horrors of the world as they have. Somehow they have always had support from others when I haven’t had so much as an apology.