I thought I was a healthy woman, until I cut myself for the first time …

My name is Sonja, 34 years old, living in Germany and struggling with depression, binge eating disorder, borderline personality disorder and fibromyalgia.

Looking back on my childhood I realize that there were always indications of borderline. But it didn’t affect me a lot.

I went through a lot of traumatic experiences. My grandfather and my aunt always gave me the feeling that I am stupid. After my uncle committed suicide I was sitting at the stairs while my dad told my grandparents the shocking news. I still can hear them screaming. I am a victim of abuse. My first boyfriend punished me with withdrawal of love. And the only thing I did was replacing it. But I started to eat a lot, sometimes secretly because it didn’t feel right. And that was the time I became the first problems in friendships. I became jealous, spied in the mobile phones of my friends, always sure that they met each other without me.

After years of abuse I met the love of my life. Christian. It was the best time of my life, hard, but full of love. One Saturday evening we went to a party, I drove the car, he drank. The party was over and I wanted to drive home. I was very tired. But he wanted to eat fries before driving home. We had a major dispute and I told him: “Go to hell.” And I drove home alone. In the morning I got a call of my friend, a cousin of Christian. He died at 3 am. He tried to walk home. He saw a taxi coming closer and went a few steps on the street, trying to stop it. The taxi driver didn’t see him. He had been rolled over. And I replaced it.

A few years later I fell in love again. But he didn’t love me. I had a heavy heartache. And with this little feeling all the emotions, the memories, the pain touched me. I broke down and went into mental hospital for the first time.

Every doctor treated me like a depressive woman and wondered why it didn’t get better. I cut myself everyday, sometimes a few times a day. And there were a lot of moments I gave up and tried to kill myself. My journey through mental hospitals took 3 years before they knew that I am a borderliner. I went to a special mental hospital with a therapy especially for BPS. And it got better. That was my last time in mental hospital.

And now I am here, writing this and thinking about my message for you, my life, my success and my failure. My message is easy to say: “Never give up!” Even in the hard times. It’s not easy to be me. It is still a fight, every day, maybe for the rest of my life. There are good and bad days. But my demons are a part of every second of my life. I only know how to handle them. My life is not perfect. At the outside I have my family, a hand full of friends, a job and a little home. But if you look behind the walls you see a woman that still have problems. Problems like cleaning my home, take care for myself, take a shower, brush my teeth, eat healthy. And still problems with closeness and distance, sleep and self hate.

The last few weeks were really hard because of a heavy depression again. But the opposite to the past is that I openly handle it. I told my boss about my currently depression and worked only a few hours a day for four weeks. I slept a lot, I cried a lot. And sometimes I only lay in my bed and hoped that I will die at night because of my overweight because I am not able to kill myself. Not because of myself. I don’t want to give this pain to my parents and my sister. They are the only reason for me still being alive. When I think about them I know what I’m fighting for. And there will be the day feeling fine again. You just have to find this one reason, this one happy feeling inside, that keeps you up. And it’s worth it.

Yes, I’m good. I have my family, my friends, my job, my home. And in comparison with other people I’m healthy. It’s a good life. Sometimes the demons inside the head tell the opposite. But don’t trust them. Listen to your heart. It started his work long before your brain!