Welcome to my many little worlds! During my journey recovering from Borderline Personality Disorder, I accidentally stumbled upon my life-saving coping skill: putting my soul to paper. As I have worded it, I found my happy place in rock bottom. I combine my creative writing and drawings to curate these personal little pieces; each that tell a unique story. 

   I have done my fair share of DBT (dialectical behavior therapy) and the most valuable thing it has offered me has been in learning how to see the scale of gray in its entirety. Life is not black and white and neither is suffering. Where there is despair, somewhere, there is hope. And where there are butterflies and gummy bears, there is suffering, too. This is my favorite dialectic; I can be creative and innovative while also having suffered. I can have this disorder and still live a beautiful life. 

   These little creations are the very reason I'm still here. Art saved my life, it gave me a reason to wake up in the morning and it gave me something to look forward to when I fell asleep.

   I hope my work can do for others even just a fraction of what it has done for me. Creativity is my main source of joy, my unexpected saving grace that found me when the only thing I was looking for was a way out. In all its irony, the brightest light found me when I was trapped in the darkest parts of rock bottom. 

  If you suffer from BPD, firstly, let me say, we are some incredibly strong individuals. Nevertheless, strong individuals that often feel weak. You are probably creative, intelligent, insightful, brave, empathetic but that is not always what the world will choose to see. The world and the stigma-tinted glasses that they see through see portions of our symptoms, mostly the ugliest parts. But the world does not see the complex story, the deep suffering, the thoughts that silently plague us. The world does not see the dialectic; the silver lining that is the strength that inevitably comes with living with BPD. Stay with us, because you don't know what could go right; you don't know what could be the life saver that rescues you in rock bottom. <3

 

with love,

~Devon