Fear as Opposed to Love

     One of the worst experiences I have had in my life is 
having had someone in my own family who is supposed to love and trust me, believe a lie about me.  
     I know that fear is the opposite of love.  That is what Depak Chopra and A Course in Miracles say and I recognize that when I get mad or lose my equipoise, I am coming from a place of fear, not necessarily of bodily harm but a feeling of rage stemming from a deep seeded abandonment issue.  A fear of abandonment which can begin in infancy of parents who do not pick up a baby when it cries or her or his needs are not answered in a timely manner, continues throughout a person's life and manifests in different ways such as clinging to inappropriate partners, low self-esteem, neediness, drama, wanting attention, difficulty maintaining relationships due to splitting, which means
seeing people as all good or all bad.  
    The rage comes from an ingrown feeling of dread of 
being left to fend for oneself in the elements, helpless and unable to survive, due to a lack of attention from one's parents or caregiver(s) at an early age as far back as being a new born.
     The ignored child has a lack of self worthiness, low self-esteem, and deep rooted insecurities.  If this infant grows into a child who is all the more neglected, she or he will more than likely be even more a victim, not necessarily by caregivers but more often by non-caregivers, friends of his or her family, of sexual abuse or abuse by teachers or schoolmates, because this child 
is like a target, somehow vulnerable.
     What I am describing is actually a mental illness which is more misunderstood by most people than any other mental illness.  Its label is misused to describe people that are not liked or considered bad, and this is a totally wrong misuse of the name of this illness.  What I am referring to is called borderline personality disorder or commonly referred to as BPD, often mistaken for bipolar because of the up and down mood swings, but it is not the same thing at all.  There are crossover symptoms such as risky behavior, severe depression and sometimes addiction in order to medicate one's mood disorder or emotional disorder.
     It is actually considered the most mentally painful mental illness, an analogy being a person with ninety percent of their body burned and every move incredibly excruciating.
     Here is the good news.  A person can actually grow out of this, and women who have stopped menstruation which can make it worse due to PMS, often get better.  A lot has been written about it.  I saw one lecture on my computer by a psychology professor who said that she had had a patient with both schizophrenia and BPD and they had told her years later, once educated, working and high functioning, that the schizophrenia was actually less painful than the BPD, because the psychosis was easier to deal with than the mental pain of depression.
     I think when I get angry, I am really afraid, frightened of abandonment, of not being loved, of not being believed, of being alone.  I suppose I am lacking love and forgiveness, but if I could only stop and realize that I am afraid, then love would prevail.
Unfortunately, I am far less than perfect, although I have worked on myself vigorously.  I think that these deep seeded feelings of self loathing and abandonment just cannot be wiped out.  Not completely.  Perhaps if one were to be God realized, or totally one with God, then that could be.  As Meher Baba said, die to one's false self to awaken to one's true self.  I did not put that in quotation marks because I am not sure of the wording and do not want to change Baba's words.  Shanti, shanti, namaste.