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  • The Chasm Within: My Battle With Personality Disorder
  • Jessica Gray1 (bio)

Long before i knew I had a personality disorder, I simply knew that my life felt unbearably difficult to live. For me, life has always been an uphill struggle, and at times I have just let myself tumble down the hill I have strived so hard to climb. Fortunately, I now understand how to keep going, and even to avoid falling down in the first place, but this learning process has taken the entire twenty-eight years of my life, and I still feel I have a long way to go.

It feels very difficult to describe the early years of my life. To me, it was like being stuck in a cage, gagged. I can remember feeling a great deal of fear, but being unable to express it. My dad would burst into anger very rapidly, and my mother would have episodes of sinking into despair. There was a great deal of tension between them, and frequent arguments. There didn’t seem to be any room to add my emotions into the mix. I can remember expending a great deal of energy on trying to placate or appease those around me.

My father firmly believed that he had been chosen to do God’s work and that God spoke through him. As a family we would have to sit silently and impassively for several hours each day to listen to ‘God.’ We were told who was good and evil, and who would be rewarded or punished in hell. My father’s behavior was very frightening and confusing. He once smashed a picture that my brother gave him as a present because he believed evil spirits were hiding in it. He was once very angry with me because he believed I gave him a migraine by ‘infecting’ him and ‘transmitting evil spirits’ to him. He kept staring at me and muttering that God would punish those who mistreated his servants. I remember having obsessive thoughts as young as age five. I would pray to God repeatedly and apologize for doing things that might be ‘evil.’ Since then, I have had on-going problems with obsessive thoughts. For example, when I was self-harming as a teenager, a voice in my head would repeatedly tell me to cut myself. I was also terri-fied of being alone in the dark at night. It often felt as if the ‘evil spirits’ that I had been told hid in dark places were in the room and had come to attack me. Again, these fears persisted long after I had stopped believing in evil spirits. As a young adult, I often felt panicky and tearful at night and could not sleep.

I can now recognize how strange my father’s behavior was, but as a child I loved him very much and believed everything he said. I feel he planted the seeds of my obsessive perfectionism and persisting sense of guilt: I was always trying not to be ‘evil’ but never sure what ‘evil’ was in his eyes. I also trace my panic attacks and paranoia to the fear he instilled in me as a child: evil spirits can be anywhere, and so you’re never really safe!

Throughout my childhood, it was extremely difficult to relate to other children. School was [End Page 185] a terrifying place. My dad told me repeatedly in ‘oracles’ that I was different to other children: ‘chosen’ like him. It seems terribly arrogant to me now, but I believed at the time that I was pure and holy, and other children were evil and dangerous. I felt unable to play games or have fun, partly out of fear, and partly due to believing that I was just too different to be able to associate and interact with them. This was compounded by terrible shyness. I never knew what to say when other children spoke to me. I often pretended to be ill to be allowed to stay at home if I was feeling especially anxious or shy. Despite my poor attendance, I worked very hard at school. This was partly because being ‘good’ seemed so crucial...

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