There is so much overlap with your struggles and mine. I am just ahead of the curve compared to you solely because my BD happened before yours and I've had more time to put in to get my $hit together.
I always considered myself a 'one-man army'. I actually prided myself with that and the label of 'survivor' and shirked at the idea of getting help. I figured that I've had so many bullets thrown at me already in life, that I could just clean and suture my own wounds - gangsta' style.
BD brought all that in perspective - I couldn't do it myself and that I really did need help. I suffer from a unique medical condition since very early on in childhood (not physically debilitating, but very destructive psychologically); both my parents abandoned me when I was 7; my father was physically abusive towards my mother and she was psychologically abusive to everyone; my life was uprooted completely in my late teens and I lost my whole community and close family; I lost contact and ties with my very close family for over a decade due to crazy stuff on part of a very narcissistic mother who gaslighted and manipulated me my whole life; i finally found out what she had done and I had no choice but to cut my contact with her; i struggled with employment; i got diagnosed with a chronic disease that I have to now manage and it came in my life very early due to bad genetics - all of this led to massive depression over decades that I didn't even realize.
And the BD happened which sent me into a stronger depressive cycle. I didn't seem to get a reprieve from life. I was getting throw $hit piles on regular intervals.
So, I snapped and decided that I was going to get help and that I was getting crushed. I never in a million years thought W would walk out and abandon me. But she did and I got hit with it again from someone close which brought back all of the pain that I had supposedly subdued, but just buried it deep down instead.
I got IC and got help. I reframed my thinking. I did deep self-reflection. And most importantly, I took action. I cannot stress the importance of action. I tend to live in my head and I decided that even though I am very good at intellectualizing things, I am bad at emotions and action. So, I focused on that. I also stopped being in analysis paralysis. I gave myself full permission to fail and make mistakes. If a decision turned out to be poor, instead of beating myself up, I took the result on the chin and took it as a learning moment.
I am telling you all of this to show you that you are not alone, and that you can get past this and become stronger and better. I am no way out of the woods yet with my mental and emotional health, but I am better than I have been in two decades. Which is still astonishing to me.
I ask this question to myself now - 'Why am I letting this happen to me?" instead of "why is this happening to me?". I know that I have agency and control and I can manipulate my contexts to a certain extent to get better outcomes.
I know that I have been a 'victim', and that I have had to learn things and grow up fast because of it. But that doesn't define who I am now. It will always be with me and I can draw upon it to learn more about myself.
I took a mental health test to see how where I should be based on my life circumstances. My score was so high that I should've been clinically depressed, suicidal, unemployed, poor, in bad health, and at the margins of society. Instead, I am at a good job, with decent improving health, empowered, handsome and funny, and smart. Even if I stay where I am at now, I am a massive success story.
