I Didn't Become "Too Much." I Became a Dementor. There's a Difference.
"My skin is healing now, but I finally understand what really drove her away"
Dear fellow travellers,
I’m writing this from my temple room in early October, a month and a bit more after the breakup that sent me here. The autumn chill has arrived, and I no longer need to hide in long sleeves from the heat - though for a while there, I was hiding for different reasons.
My skin has healed significantly. The condition that made people avoid me in the dining hall, that prompted the kitchen laywoman to gently suggest I cover up - it’s much better now. You can barely see it anymore.
But here’s what I’m learning with two months of distance and perspective: my skin condition was never why she left. I’ve become a Dementor from Harry Potter - one of those soul-sucking creatures that drain all the joy and warmth from everything around them.
That’s what chronic illness combined with BPD turned me into. And I didn’t even realize it was happening.
The Year Everything Collapsed
Before the breakup, before the temple, there was a year when I was too sick to work. An “almost incurable disease,” the doctors said. The kitchen laywoman here believes it was divine punishment - that the gods gave me this illness for reasons related to my relationship. I don’t know if I believe that, but when you’re desperate for answers, even spiritual explanations start to sound plausible.
For a year, my body wasn’t my own. I couldn’t support myself financially or emotionally. I lived in that garage room at my parents’ house for three months while she took care of me - cooking, researching treatments, applying the Zeroid lotion she’d bought specifically for my condition.
She promised to cook for me “for life.” She said she’d never let me go hungry, that she’d protect me forever.
But here’s what I’m finally digesting now, with clarity that only comes from distance: it wasn’t my sick body that exhausted her. It was what being sick did to my mind, and how I turned her into my entire emotional life support system.
When BPD Becomes a Black Hole
Before I got sick, my BPD was ‘manageable’ - more like a side-kick to my personality. It was serious, but it didn’t constantly overwhelm everything. I could regulate my emotions (mostly). I could handle my fear of abandonment without becoming completely unhinged. I functioned independently.
But when my body broke down, my mind followed in ways I didn’t recognize at the time.
The fear of abandonment became constant terror. Not just BPD anxiety anymore - actual, justified fear because I was genuinely dependent on her for everything. Every moment she wasn’t with me felt like proof she was already halfway out the door.
I needed constant reassurance. “Do you still love me?” “You’re not going to leave me, right?” “Promise you’ll stay?” Over and over and over, like a broken record she couldn’t turn off.
I got anxious when she wanted to spend time with friends and even her family. Jealous over the smallest interactions with others. Every text she sent to someone else felt like evidence that I wasn’t enough.
Living felt like hell, and nothing pleased me. I complained constantly - about pain, about symptoms, about how terrible everything felt. No matter what she did to comfort me, it was never enough to make me okay.
I became a Dementor. Every interaction with me drained her a little by little. I sucked the joy out of her life, one anxious question and complaint at a time.
The Realization That Came Too Late
Last week, I was giving an English tour to foreign temple guests - 22 people from various countries. It was the first time since coming here that I felt truly alive, using my skills, connecting with people, being myself beyond my grief.
For those two hours, I was present. Engaged. Contributing something positive to the world around me instead of constantly taking.
And it hit me: this is who I used to be before illness turned me into someone whose only emotional state was “needing.” This capacity to give, to engage, to bring something to an interaction beyond my own pain - I’d lost that completely during that sick year.
She didn’t leave because my skin looked bad. She didn’t leave because taking care of my body was too much work. The physical care - the cooking, the lotion application, the doctor visits - she could handle all of that.
She left because I made her responsible for regulating my entire emotional state, and that became unbearable.
What the Dementor Metaphor Finally Helped Me See
In Harry Potter, Dementors don’t mean to drain joy from people. They just do it by existing near them. Their presence makes everything feel hopeless, cold, impossible.
That’s what I became without realizing it.
Every conversation became about my anxiety. Every plan got derailed by my emotional needs. Every moment she tried to enjoy something - friends, hobbies, simple pleasures - I made it about whether she still loved me, whether she was going to leave, whether I was enough.
The illness gave my behavior legitimacy in my mind: Of course I need constant reassurance - I’m sick and vulnerable! Of course I’m clingy - I literally need help! Of course I’m anxious - I’m completely dependent!
But from her perspective, it must have felt like drowning. Like no matter how much love she poured into me, there was always a void demanding more. Like I’d become this bottomless pit of need that no amount of care could ever fill.
The Thing Nobody Tells You About Chronic Illness + BPD
Here’s what I’m learning: chronic illness doesn’t just attack your body. It amplifies every mental health symptom you have until you become unrecognizable to yourself and unbearable to others.
My BPD symptoms that were manageable when I was healthy became all-consuming when I was sick:
Fear of abandonment → Constant panic that she’d realize I wasn’t worth the effort
Need for validation → Hourly requests for reassurance
Emotional dysregulation → Complete inability to self-soothe
Fear of being alone → Anxiety every time she left the room
And the worst part? I thought I was just being reasonably needy given my circumstances. I thought she should understand. I thought her exhaustion meant she didn’t love me enough.
I didn’t realize I’d become someone even I wouldn’t want to be around.
What a Month at the Temple Has Taught Me
The kitchen laywoman here, for all her spiritual theories I’m not sure I believe, showed me something important through her actions: genuine care doesn’t require the other person to be your entire emotional support system.
She sees my improving skin. She notices when I look sad and drives me to see the ocean. She remembers I can’t eat flour and makes food differently.
But she doesn’t let me make her responsible for my emotional state. When I start spiraling about my ex, she listens for a moment, then redirects me to prayer, to work, to being present. She cares without being consumed by my caring needs.
That’s what I never learned to do with my ex. I made every feeling her responsibility to fix. Every anxiety was her job to soothe. Every moment of pain was something she needed to make better.
No wonder she left. I’d turned our relationship into her being my unpaid, full-time emotional therapist while also being my nurse, cook, and financial support.
The Monks’ Take on What Went Wrong
One of the monks here says my condition was karma - that I need to control myself better, pray harder, and then my body and mind will heal. Maybe he’s right in ways he doesn’t realize.
Maybe my karma isn’t about divine punishment. Maybe it’s about learning that you can’t outsource your emotional regulation to another person, no matter how legitimately terrible you feel. Especially when you feel terrible.
The monk told me to recite prayers 108 times a day to become a new person. I’m doing it, but not because I think it’ll magically fix me. I’m doing it because the repetition teaches me something: I can sit with discomfort without making it someone else’s emergency.
I can feel anxious without immediately needing someone to tell me it’ll be okay. I can feel pain without demanding someone fix it right now. I can exist in emotional distress without turning into a Dementor that sucks all the light out of the room.
For Anyone Who Became “Too Much”
If you’re reading this because chronic illness or mental health struggles turned you into someone whose needs became overwhelming - I want you to know something hard but important:
Your body’s struggle is not a moral failing. But making someone else solely responsible for managing your emotional state is a burden that will eventually break even the strongest love.
The people who left because your body was visibly struggling were shallow and aren’t worth your grief. But the people who left because your emotional neediness became impossible to sustain - that’s more complicated.
Maybe they genuinely couldn’t handle it. Maybe you became someone even YOU wouldn’t want to live with. Maybe both things are true.
You deserve care when you’re struggling. You deserve support when your body fails you. But you also need to learn - like I’m learning and I wish I’d learned before - how to exist in crisis without turning everyone around you into crisis responders.
Your pain is valid. Your fear is understandable. But your emotional regulation is ultimately your responsibility, even when - especially when - everything feels impossible.
The View From Here: Two Months Later
I’m writing this as autumn settles over the temple, a month after the breakup that felt like the end of everything. My skin has healed enough that people no longer avoid me. I’m working here, giving English tours, cleaning up rooms, slowly remembering who I was before illness turned me into a Dementor.
Some days I still miss her so much it physically hurts. I still think about her constantly - when I eat good food, when I see beautiful things, when I want to share a moment with someone.
But I’m starting to understand something she tried to tell me in that final phone call: “I accommodated you from the beginning. It was exhausting.”
At the time, I heard it as her being cruel. Now I hear it as truth: I made accommodating me her full-time job. And nobody signed up for that, no matter how much they loved me.
The temple bells ring at 4:30 AM whether I’ve figured out emotional independence or not. The sun rises whether my skin is clear or not. Life continues, and I have to learn how to be in it without being a joy-sucking presence that drains everyone around me.
I’m not there yet. But while giving that English tour, I remembered what it felt like to give energy instead of only taking it. To add light to a room instead of dimming everything around me.
Maybe that’s where healing actually begins - not in having perfect skin or a perfect emotional state, but in learning to exist without making your struggle everyone else’s burden to carry.
These letters from the temple are how I’m learning that chronic illness + BPD can turn you into a Dementor without you even realizing it, and that sometimes the most loving thing someone can do is leave before you drain them completely. If you’ve become “too much” for someone you love - you’re not alone in this specific, complicated grief.
Next week: “The Moment You Realise You’re Free,” because sometimes things you love are the chains that are holding you down.
Emotionally yours (all of them at once),
Suinny
If you’re struggling with chronic illness, BPD, codependency, or thoughts of self-harm, please reach out:
Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 Find DBT/BPD therapists: Psychology Today directory
Your emotions aren’t too much, but learning to manage them without making others responsible for your regulation is a skill worth developing. You deserve support AND you deserve to learn independence.