This ain't your typical breakup

It's different for everyone, of course, but for me the breakup with my exwBPD is an eightfold whammy of pain, with each whammy being more painful than it would have been with a neurotypical partner.

• First whammy is that I lost someone who felt like the best partner I'd ever had -- maybe even my soulmate. That would have been devastating enough on its own, even with an amicable breakup.
• Second whammy is that the breakup was by far the most bitter I've experienced. Not only did I lose my partner, I "gained" the pain of being vilified and blamed exclusively for the failure of the relationship. In her eyes she was an innocent victim while I was the dastardly villain, and she was happy to list my faults in painstaking detail. There was some resentment at the end of my other relationships, but we still liked and respected each other and ultimately ended up on friendly terms. Not with my exwBPD. She thinks I'm a horrible person who traumatized her. I know she's wrong, but I still hate the fact that someone I loved so much thinks of me that way.
• Third whammy is that most of her complaints and accusations against me were false, though I'm convinced that she actually believes them. I was defending myself against bogus charges in a kangaroo court. A court where she was both prosecutor and judge, where much of the evidence was fabricated by her (intentionally or not), and where she had already decided on a guilty verdict. Her stories morphed over time to paint me in a progressively worse light, and she would respond each time as if the latest version were actually true. I've never dealt with a partner who lost contact with reality to that extent.
• Fourth whammy was the self-doubt. When she reacted so negatively to me and with such apparent certainty, I naturally started to wonder if I was somehow at fault. The repeated accusations, delivered with such certainty, chipped away at my confidence. In effect, she was brainwashing me.
• Fifth whammy was that the final discard came out of nowhere. Usually in a relationship the signs of trouble gradually accrue. You try to work through them with your partner as they arise. If in the end you fail, you break up, but it isn't a shock. You can see it coming. With my ex, it came out of the blue. I was blindsided.
• Sixth whammy is that it left me utterly confused, especially since I knew almost nothing about BPD at the time. (She was undiagnosed, but my therapist figured it out.) What actually triggered the breakup? (Her story shifted.) How did I go from wonderful to horrible in her eyes in a heartbeat? Where did all the lies and/or confabulations come from? Why did she interpret what I said and did in the most negative way possible? If I'm so horrible, why the hoovers? If she was so frightened of losing me, why did she discard me? I understand all of that now, but man was it confusing at the time.
• Seventh whammy is that friends and family usually don't understand what it's like and how it differs from a normal breakup (unless they've experienced BPD firsthand). I'm lucky in that I have a couple of close siblings who took the time to read up on BPD so they could better appreciate what I was going through. I got super lucky in that my therapist, whom I was seeing long before I got involved with my ex, just happens to be an expert on BPD. Friends don't really get it, and though they'd be willing to listen, I don't want to force a BPD education upon them.
• Eighth whammy is the post-breakup smear campaign. I was lucky in that my ex only smeared me to one person in my circle: my sister, who had been friends with her for years but had ended the friendship because of the way she treated me. The smears were my ex's attempt to rescue the friendship. She thought she might be able to persuade my sister that I was really as bad as she claimed and that her treatment of me was therefore justified. My sister, who knows me well, saw through the bullshit. She and I are both NC with my ex.

I thought my ex was one of the best things that had ever happened to me, but she turned out to be one of the worst. It was by far the most excruciating breakup I've experienced, and the pain is ongoing. I wish I had never met her.