Can two people with BPD have a meaningful friendship?

I ask this question because of recent events.  During an inpatient stay at the beginning of the year I became friends with a patient, Joanne, who at the time was 19, 4 years younger than me.

It's an unusual situation meeting people on psychiatric wards.  I always swore I wouldn't make any lasting friendships through mental health services, but when you're sharing a room with other young people for several months it's difficult to not get emotionally attached to other patients.

I was always a little bit suspicious of Joanne.  She would often exhibit attention-seeking behaviour.  My experience of self-harm is that of a private one.  I was shocked when in her first few days she began cutting herself in full view of other patients and in many instances would insist they went and got a nurse on her behalf.  I immediately refused to be part of such games but some of the other less savvy patients would feed into this attention-seeking behaviour.

I am confident that a lot of what she talked about was founded in lies. She would make up stories of previous experiences, usually very far-fetched.  For example, at the age of 19 she claimed to have had 3 pregnancies.  One, she claimed, was aborted, another miscarried and a further baby she allegedly gave birth to "in secret" and "gave it" to her friends parents.  I'll let you make up your mind on the authenticity of these events.

She seemed to treat being an inpatient like a game.   On some occasions she would enquire about the circumstances of my admission, and then seek to "get equal" with it.  For example, on finding out I'd been under a section at one point, she set out to get on a section herself.  I began having to lie to her just to prevent her from striving to compete with me.

Sadly, a good friend of mine, Kath, who I also met as an inpatient (a much more successful friendship with a non-BPD patient), was not so wise to Joanne's behaviour.  Joanne became locked in a battle to out-do anything Kath did, or anyone else for that matter.  Since meeting Joanne I have taken a number of overdoses, and although I haven't personally told her about this, word soon gets round when you go missing from the psychiatric ward for a few days to get treatment from the medical side.  She would then claim to have taken similar overdoses.  But she never got ill.

Over the last eleven months I've been incredibly lenient and ignored the fact she would often lie or exaggerate things for attention.  I blamed it on immaturity.  For all her flaws, I could also see a little bit of me in her.  It felt like I'd found a "little sister", and I had started to try and guide and protect her.

Over the past few months however it has become an impossible task.  If she hasn't been an inpatient she has been trying her hardest to become one.  I'm lucky in that since June I've only spent 13 nights as an inpatient.  She, on the other hand has become so determined to be admitted.  I think she's been an inpatient on four occasions now, the first three she was almost physically removed from the unit after refusal to be discharged.  Currently she is trying all measures to prevent herself from being discharged.  All she cares about is getting attention on the ward.  Where most people would love to be out of the hospital getting on with their lives she relishes being in there.

It's come to the point where enough is enough.  I've found myself becoming increasingly nasty when talking to her.  I am sick and tired of her behaviour.  I do believe she can help a lot of what she does and says, especially because the majority of what she says is a lie, told to gain sympathy.  I found myself almost bullying her.  I've since made the decision to cut her off.  I no longer have contact with her.  It was a pointless friendship that I invested far more in than she did.

It made me feel sad to lose a friend, until I had the realisation that there was no friend there in the first place to be lost.