I have one sibling with confirmed BPD and another “on the BPD spectrum” as I put it, and I’m certain I’m on that spectrum as well.

About 8 months after starting HRT and formally beginning to transition socially I started to care about myself for the first time I can remember.

A family member who worked at a “fun” SF startup’s call center kept asking me to apply. I really didn’t want to, because I knew I’d probably hate it. But I was working a dead end, barely above minimum wage job, so one day I just decided to take a chance.

I went from a very low social contact job to a call center for a west coast startup where the average person is at least 10 years younger than me…

…just as I began to socially transition. Maybe not the best idea in hindsight.

The next three and a half years are the most cringeworthy memories a person can possibly have. I was completely not myself…

Prior to taking HRT, I’d “fallen in love” with the most unavailable people. But I knew how to keep my mouth shut because I didn’t want to mess up the friendship. I never stopped loving them, I’d just control myself about it.

But at that job… I “Fell in Love” with, amongst -several- others, a guy like 8 years younger than me, and with him I just could not take no for an answer. Every call, every text… Trying to justify my worth, begging for him to just “Give me a chance and you’ll see how amazing we are.” In hindsight it didn’t help that I think he was stringing me along for the validation.

After about 2 years of this he called me up after work. Told me I was a “shit person” (he wasn’t wrong, but that stung pretty bad), and told me he didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. I can’t even remember what it was about, because I was so self obsessed at the time. I just remember how much it hurt. But after that, I just left him alone. No talking shit, no drama whatsoever. After about a year, I’d go on to destroy almost every friendship I made in those three and a half years and get myself fired.

The pandemic and becoming politically aware was what it took to finally start to “wake me up.” In 2022 I lost the only family relationship I had left… Not over politics, but by having my political views outright dismissed. Being called a conspiracy theorist (Because I was saying what’s happening was going to happen), and being told that being targeted by some percentage of the population was something I’d just have to accept because nothing can be done about it. (he technically wasn’t wrong, but that stung pretty bad, lol) I shook his hand that day and told him to have a good life, then stabbed him with an emotional dagger as he walked out. I needed to make sure I could never fix it. And I’m pretty sure it worked.

That’s what it took to get me to realize I had to fix it, whether I had healthcare or not. So I started learning about mental health, which was easier because I already had an interest in it. Then, in 2023 I was listening to a Stuff You Should Know about mental illness. They were talking about BPD and I was half listening until they said something like “Wow, it sounds like a literal medieval curse!” … I have always felt like there was a curse or something on my family, so I re listened to that part and they explained so much of what I’d gone through. My diagnosed sibling too.

No official diagnosis, but I think; Like Autism, all mental health is on a spectrum. Back at that job, I 100% know I would have been diagnosable. Now, not so much. But I still deal with some of those feelings and impulses.

So while HRT wasn’t the only big change I made at the time, I think it was the catalyst. From what I understand we go through a kind of a second adolescence (please correct me if I’m wrong), which I think is fertile ground for latent genetic and environmental issues to grow.

That’s my theory, anyway.