Waiting to Exhale: A Question about Borderline Personality Stigma

In the lesbian, gay, bi, trans, and queer community, people often remark on the fact that "coming out" is a strange and misleading image of what it means and what it feels like to reveal one's sexual orientation.  The usual image of coming out looks like this: a person walking through a door, stepping out of a closet, standing up in a gesture of pride once and for all to say I am gay and I am glad for everyone to know about it!  But of course coming out doesn't work that way.  As a lesbian, and now as spouse to a transguy, I come out, stay in, walk through the grocery store in an oblivious haze, take the microphone at a rally, correct (or do not correct) pronouns over dinner or in a hallway conversation at work every single day to some degree or another.  It is a constant flow of outness and in-ness and in-betweenness.

There is no single coming out moment.

The same is true of coming out as a borderline personality.

I can come out or not as borderline personality depending on my comfort level, my audience, my mood, the stakes, and so on.  As with my late-blooming lesbian-ness, I rarely expect people around me to react in a positive way to my coming out as borderline personality.  Mainly, this is because I am paranoid as shit.  Turns out, the people around me are pretty cool about the borderline thing (and about the lesbian thing and the transguy spouse thing). 

My campus publicity office has put my new book on blast as a top headline on the university's website.  I feel all melty and in love with my campus for doing this. Usually I feel like they hate me.  Obviously, my borderline personality patterns extend beyond my loved ones to work acquaintances I rarely even see in person who probably do not hate me or love me or think about me very much at all.

I came out again on The Frisky.  I held my breath and waited for the mean comments.  But the comments weren't mean. They were engaged, enthusiastic, uplifting, personal, earnest, vulnerable, and real.  Authentic.  My absolute favorite emotional demeanor.

My new friend Kiera wrote a book called The Buddha and the Borderline.  It's coming out on August 1, 2010.  As part of the pre-release publicity, Kiera came out of the psycho closet.  I like her bold language.  She sounds fearless.

We are in the age of coming out.  We may actually be in a post-coming-out era.  Coming out is so nineties, you know?  I kissed a girl and I like it.  I have borderline personality and I'm kind of okay with that, too.  Or, I want to be okay with it but I'm still kind of nervous.  The general public is playing it cool, though, standing with one hip cocked to the side and singing along with Perry Farrell that nothing's shocking.

Has borderline personality rocketed from psycho closet to cause celebre?  I'm relieved but also really surprised. 

Tell me what you think.  Is the stigma not as bad as I thought?