BPD brings the storm; OCD builds the fortress. Born out of childhood trauma, these two conditions are not just diagnoses—they are my armour, my jailers, and the twin forces that kept me alive. This collection is a look inside a rewired mind where emotion and rigid law collide.
Bound To One Another…
My earliest world was built out of dread,
With my Father’s loud anger and the things that he said.
My mother was distant, detached, and so cold,
Dismissing the words of a child four years old.
Dad drank and grew paranoid, questioning why,
Demanding the truth while he called it a lie.
He threw dinner plates through the window in rage,
Trapping us both in a violence filled cage.
I’d hit with small fists, begging him to give peace,
While he shouted at Mum, to make hostility cease.
I’d cry with my face pressed deep in my bed,
While ghosts of the shouting still rang in my head.
Mum staged midnight exits with bags that were bare,
Walking us out into the cold evening air.
Knowing he’d catch us and beg us to stay,
A sick, endless loop repeated day after day.
And because I was told all families were the same,
I carried the terror and swallowed the pain.
At eighteen months old, at the child-minder's gate,
Handed right over to torment and hate.
She broke down our safety, she fractured our soul,
Leaving me searching for some kind of control.
On the drive to her house, I would start up a prayer:
Please God, don't let her be mean to me there.
When it worked, it took root, when it failed, I’d add more,
Counting and whispering all the way to her door.
My magical thinking began out of fear,
My OCD born out of desperation right here.
It spread to my sleep, to my steps on the ground,
Writing new rules when no safety was found.
Compulsions took over, a blueprint so tight,
Guarding by day and protecting by night.
Everything split into right or to wrong,
Building the rituals where they had to belong.
It’s an uncompromising master that lives in my brain,
A burrowing worm filling my head up with strain.
Then BPD joined in, a partner in crime,
Rewriting the script for a whole lifetime.
Seeing my habits and all that I do,
They ask out loud why I must follow through.
People say "just don't do it," like it's easy to choose,
Like I want to be trapped and have everything to lose.
They think I don't logic the truth of the spell,
That rituals don't magically keep us from hell.
But what if I stopped, and the worst came to pass?
How would I live if my world shattered like glass?
I didn't ask for the rules, but they kept me alive,
A desperate design just to help me survive.
They protected my soul when the world was unkind,
Leaving permanent scars carved into my mind.
As much as I’d love to be normal and free,
Living without them is just not meant to be.
My BPD and my OCD, bound to one another,
Neither of us is anything without the other.
OCD Meet BPD…
One screams that the world is ending,
the other demands I make it right.
One sets fire to the house,
the other counts the doors all night.
BPD brings the sudden flood,
a wave of fear I cannot tame.
OCD steps into the surge
to give the chaos shape and name.
Re-read the text. Check it twice.
Are they leaving? Are they fake?
Did I say the wrong thing now?
How many rules did I just break?
One turns a spark into a rage,
the next day leaves me feeling bare.
The other keeps me locked inside
to make sure no one sees me there.
It’s feeling far too much at once,
then desperately trying to stay clean.
It’s burning up inside the fire,
then sweeping where the ashes have been.
It’s checking if my mind is split,
replaying moments frame by frame.
It’s losing who I used to be,
then taking all the fucking blame.
One tears the whole foundation down,
the other tries to stack the bricks.
A constant war inside my head,
a life I break, a life I fix.
My Enemies And My Friends…
My brain is pure chaos, a hundred demands,
Where BPD fractures and breaks all commands.
Then OCD joins in the heat of the fray,
To forge a new rule I am forced to obey.
It has to be exact, or the niggle awakes,
And pulls me to tasks I must do for mistakes.
If something is missed or not quite on the line,
I balance the scales with a desperate design.
I follow compulsions I know are not real,
They don't guard a soul, yet are as solid as steel.
I mirror and mask just to look the same,
To blend with the crowd and keep looking sane.
If people could look at the vault in my head,
They’d stare and they’d judge with a coldness instead.
I don’t even know who I am in the haze,
Just carrying riots through all of my days.
Exhausted and worn from thoughts that won't cease,
The questions that never surrender their peace.
Everything rigid, black or white,
Box A or Box B, it’s wrong or it’s right.
And when it's too heavy, I have to succumb,
They both join up forces and make me go numb.
I function, I move, but the pilot's away,
A ghost in the machine for a vanishing day.
The feelings go quiet, the static turns down,
So I follow the rules through the mute, empty town.
Yet under the calm, a hot simmer of rage,
And triggers just waiting to be let out of their cage.
I’m painfully honest, though biting my tongue,
You think you want the truth, but you’re always wrong,
So I try not to speak it, a battle hard won,
And keeping it locked leaves me hollow and done.
Yet every strict rule gives a footing to stand,
A framework to hold that is steady and planned.
A system born early to shield a child's mind,
Still standing as strong as it was left behind.
My brain needs the structure, unchanging and sure.
To keep me connected, my feet on the floor.
I don't deal in maybes or what-if debate,
My OCD reasoning makes every choice straight.
It's fact or it's fiction, no middle to see,
The absolute logic is an anchor to me.
I read at a sprint just to get to the core,
I don't need the padding or fluff anymore.
When people are talking, I’m ten steps ahead,
And biting my tongue so the words remain unsaid.
My intellect leaps through the noise and the view,
I’ve mapped out the steps of what you’re going to do.
For every direction a script is prepared,
A chess match of caution where nothing is spared.
Pure strength and willpower locked in my chest,
To finish whatever I put to the test.
With precision in every detail I trace,
It’s all or it’s nothing, no half-measured space.
With razor sharp empathy guiding my way,
I always know just the right thing to say.
They aren't just quirks that I started to do,
They saved a small child and guided her through.
The armour and scars that helped me to survive,
The proof of a mind's power to keep me alive.
Without these disorders, the verse wouldn't flow,
No poetry written, no truths left to show.
My equal twin forces where darkness descends—
My BPD, OCD, enemies, and friends.
I Asked My Mother…
When I was just a little girl
I asked my mother, "What will I be?”
“Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?"
Here's what she said to me:
“You’ll live with a rage that is burning inside,
With nowhere to run and with nowhere to hide.
Your mood will switch fast from a high to a low,
From zero to a hundred in one sudden blow.
You’ll put on a mask so you fit in the crowd,
While screaming in silence where no-one is loud.
You’ll push people off and you’ll learn how to break,
Just building a shell for survival's sweet sake.
Your choices will split into black or to white,
With impulses striking like a flash in the night.
When everything freezes and turns into stone,
You’ll sit with the wreckage and suffer alone.
You’ll follow the laws that are etched in your head,
Repeating the checks just to quiet the dread.
With compulsions and rituals locking you tight,
Following the patterns to keep everything right.
You’ll carry the grief for the child who was there,
Whose world was destroyed by a weight hard to bear.
And deep underneath where the trauma will last,
You’ll never escape from the chains of your past.”
What You Can’t See…
Look at me, I’m dying inside,
My mind torn apart just from trying to survive.
I’m full of anger, I’m full of rage,
A lion trapped in a too small cage.
You think I am normal, the same as you,
I’m trying so hard to look that way too.
What you cannot see, you don't think is there,
I’m crying inside, but why don’t you care?
I can act just like you, I mirror and mask,
It comes to me naturally, requiring no task.
I don’t know who I am, that person's not me,
Why can’t I be who I just want to be?
When you cannot see the pain in my mind,
You can’t understand why you think I’m unkind.
I’m broken, I’m damaged, I can’t be repaired,
I’m angry, I’m sad, and I’m desperately scared.
All these emotions run wild and intense,
And from the outside they make no sense.
The rules and compulsions I have to obey,
The endless demands day after day.
The struggle I fight so you don’t see the break,
Holding on tight for everyone else’s sake.
The questions that eat away at my soul,
The emptiness, the void, and lack of control.
None of it shows to the rest of the world,
Just loose, scattered pages, unanchored, unfurled.
How can I expect you to see what is hid?
To know what I fight, or the work that I did?
If it isn't visible, you don't believe,
While I'm trapped in the weight of what you perceive.
You turn a blind eye, you turn a deaf ear,
And walk right on by while I'm drowning in fear.
You can’t understand what you can’t see,
The chaos of living with OCD and BPD.
You Can’t Understand Me…
You walk through a world where the paths are all clear,
Where people breathe easily and your life is sincere.
They coast on their instincts, they bend and they blend,
With a middle-ground buffer from start to the end.
They don’t know the weight of a binary code,
Or counting the invisible lines on the road.
They don’t live in boxes marked bad or marked good,
Or run on a grid that was built in the blood.
My honesty strips all the pleasantries bare,
My OCD doesn't permit a false air.
You say that you want the unvarnished and true,
Till the unvarnished fact is too sharp even for you.
My BPD runs with a current so high,
I’m sobbing or soaring straight up to the sky.
Twenty emotions compressed in an hour,
A storm that surpasses all reason and power.
And simmering under the surface of things,
A rage that is waiting for whatever it brings.
I monitor constantly, locking it tight,
To keep the raw violence from reaching the light.
Then sudden dissociation pulls down the veils,
The circuits blow out and the processing fails.
I’m only half here while the rest of me stays,
Erased in the present, with no yesterdays.
My past has no feeling, a ghost on a screen,
Just bare data left where the soul should have been.
The emotion is wiped, so it doesn't seem real,
Just living in now with no past I can feel.
I deal in hard logic. You cannot debate.
My OCD splits every choice at the gate:
Box A or Box B, there is no middle ground,
No soft place to land and no grey to be found.
You look at my rituals, thinking me blind,
A four-year-old child’s system stuck in my mind.
I know it’s irrational and it doesn’t protect,
But I still follow the rules and they must be correct.
Five items of food a day, two hours pedalling away,
Extreme rigid rules that I am bound to obey.
I do not love people, I keep them apart,
A coldness by design, not a failure of heart.
Except for my son, who is woven inside,
The one single exception where warmth is allied.
I come across blunt, like a wall made of stone,
A fortress of safety, defended alone.
I didn’t ask for my brain to be rewired,
Or for the BPD, and OCD that it sired.
I am different. I know it. You see it as well,
A creature apart, that survived through the hell.
Different…
You’re handed a diagnosis, given a name,
A way to find others who share the same pain.
You look for your people, expecting a match,
Till your other condition throws off the catch.
They’re so much like you in most every light,
Yet something about it is never quite right.
Their borderline mirrors the storm in your head,
But OCD changes the path that you tread.
They hit the same triggers, feel the same strain,
But their splitting subsides every now and again.
While OCD turns the whole world black or white,
Trapping your mind in a permanent fight.
They burn in the fire, then watch it go cold,
While I’m bound by rules that I’m forced to uphold.
Their storm is a wave that eventually clears,
Mine is chained to the law of my compulsions and fears.
You fixate and strive for absolute control,
While raw, reckless impulse takes its full toll.
That persistent quiet voice nagging away,
Forces your hand when you try to delay.
You don’t have just one noise inside to contend,
BPD’s emotions, impossible to bend.
While OCD dictates each order and flaw,
Until its cruel voice becomes absolute law.
Rules written deep into all that you do,
Every movement and thought dictated, forced through.
While BPD screams at the raw, burning sight,
OCD holds the whip and keeps the grip tight.
I thought that a name would finally set me free,
A crowd where I’d fit and just learn how to be.
But standing among them, the truth becomes clear,
I’m a creature apart, with no place even here.
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