People with borderline personality disorder are very highly sensitive. Experts believe that these individuals experience emotions much more intensely than the average person. They are sometimes called emotional burn victims. A person with undamaged skin doesn't feel pain when their clothes brush up against them, but a person with 3rd degree burns experiences excruciating pain - having BPD is the emotional equivalent of living your life covered in 3rd degree burns.
This means that all day every day the tiniest things cause immense pain. A tone of voice, a single word in a sentence, a gesture, a flicker of the eyes - I am constantly being bombarded with information that tells me that everybody around me hates me, is judging me, or doesn't care about me.
On the other hand when I receive information that tells me a person likes me, I experience intense fondness for that person. Borderlines experience things as all good or all bad (aka black and white thinking) so when I see a sign that indicates that someone hates me, I feel they are the devil and they despise me. When I believe the opposite I see that person as ideal. Then, when I constantly fluctuate between seeing the same person as sometimes horrible and sometimes perfect, I get very confused. It's exhausting.
The tiniest things make me want to kill myself. Yesterday I woke up a little dehydrated and my face looked puffy in the mirror - I then proceeded to tie a belt around my neck and try to hang myself from the door knob in the bathroom - because my face was puffy. It seems like such a small thing but one small thing can easily become a symbol for everything awful in my life and everything I hate about myself.
I would like to add though that borderlines have a reputation for being really nasty people. We're not all like that. I've never yelled at anyone or said nasty things or accused significant others of cheating or lying or anything like that. Some of us turn all of our emotions inward. I've never hurt anyone but myself, and of course my husband but not because of the way I treated him but the way I treated myself. Many of the women at the center were, honesty, extremely nasty, self centered and impossible to deal with, but many were very kind and caring and sensitive individuals who have kind of gotten a "bad wrap" because of the nasty borderlines.