After a lengthy battle with Borderline Personality Disorder, my partner passed away earlier this year

[WolfGirl]

After a lengthy battle with Borderline Personality Disorder, my partner passed away earlier this year.

I'm finding it so hard to cope with his loss. Although at the time of his passing we were not in a good place romantically, I always had hope that he would seek the treatment he needed and that we would be able to resume our romantic relationship. When he was in a good headspace, he was the most wonderful young man. I am lost without him.

I am 23, and was diagnosed with anxiety, depression and a panic disorder at 16. I generally try to cope without medication, but am now feeling as though staying functional is incredibly draining. I have lost all interest in work; in my hobbies; in most of my friends and family. I don't know what to do. All I can think about is how much I loved him; how much I wanted to help him and how badly I failed him.

[geoff]

hello, I am so sorry for you that your partner has passed away, but feeling any guilt of not being able to help someone you really love when either one of you has depression or the both of you are struggling with this illness, is a hard call, simply because we might be powerless to do what we really want to do, and that is to help them through this terrible ordeal, as we don't have the strength we need to be able to cope and focus on these issues.

It would be easy to blame yourself as your relationship was not going too well, but that's unfair to you, as who can take responsibility, and now isn't the time to blame yourself, there are always two sides to a story.

Both of you were having to cope with your own depression, so how can you or anyone judge who was the worst off, no one really because one of you might be trying to put on a brave face, so this doesn't mean that your partner had more concerns than you, maybe he did.

Now your mood has worsened, so you do need medical help, because you have to cope with this loss, plus you have been suffering for 7 years.

No one can stop someone from taking their own life, they believe they can, but it's a decision that evades us all, we just can't.

People may seem to be coping, and some not, but it's that person's personal choose, we can't know exactly what they are thinking, and this is the sad part, but you can't be at fault and not blame yourself, you wanted him so deeply to get professional help, so by doing this you were trying to help him.

Please reply and talk to us, and I can only say how sorry this must be for you. Take care. L Geoff. x

[Mark_098]

WolfGirl, I hope that by telling you my story, it will possibly give you a bit of help in dealing with some of the load you must be carrying at the moment 😞

I lost my brother in 2006 and I am not trying to compare your situation to mine, as everybody's brushes with loss are all very personal and different. What I do know is that when you have love for anybody that you loose, it can seem like the mountain is just so big to get to the top of...

One day I asked myself if I was ever going to gather the strength to move on with my life?  Because although I was carrying so much of his pain, and so much guilt for his loss and my love for him, I could see that giving him all of me was slowly eroding me away piece by piece, and that that wouldn't be what he would have wanted, ever...

One day a counselor said to me "Mark I know you say you feel responsible for his death, but so does your mum, your dad and your sister too" "surely you can't all be responsible?" Then I guess it just became clear, even though we all felt we were responsible for his death, the only person who was truly responsible for him, was him.  It didn't take much of the sting out at all for me, but it did make some things clearer for me to try to make sense of it all and to try and put my life slowly back together again. 

Given you were in love with him it must have been so hard to find out about it, and to have carried it all of these years, and my heart goes out to you.  It would be a very difficult situation to be in.

I hope you can slowly find the courage, the courage to think about things and maybe work through your feelings toward him a little, past and present,  as I'm sure that it is what he would want for you... to be happy 🙂

Remember little step by little step...

I hope this post helps a little WolfGirl

Mark