For 14 silent seconds, Dolphins wide receiver Brandon Marshall gripped the podium in the humid, windless area behind the Dolphins’ Davie building as if he wasn’t waiting for questions, but waiting for exactly the right way to say what he had to say.
It was an appropriate start to an unusual 30-minute media session during which Marshall, between long pauses, revealed that he has been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. He believes BPD to be the cause of the many personal and professional blowups that have formed the public image of a Pro Bowl player as troubled as he is talented.
Marshall said he wants to let people know about his own BPD to raise awareness.
“The longer that BPD, Borderline Personality Disorder, goes untreated the worse it gets as you all have seen my life publicly,” Marshall said. “I would have thrown away my career, and there was a good possibility my life. I’m still suffering from the consequences of this. Another reason why I am so passionate it is because I may lose my wife still and that hurts me. I am a very passionate person.
According to the Mayo Clinic’s website, “Borderline Personality Disorder [BPD] is an emotional disorder that causes emotional instability, leading to stress and other problems. With Borderline Personality Disorder your image of yourself is distorted, making you feel worthless and fundamentally flawed. Your anger, impulsivity and frequent mood swings may push others away, even though you desire loving relationships.”
Marshall said he thinks his BPD kicked in heavily after his rookie season, 2006 after what he called “traumatic relationships with family members and a past relationship.”
Though Marshall declined to be more specific, that’s around the time Marshall’s good friend and teammate, Denver Broncos cornerback Darrant Williams, was shot New Year’s Day 2007 outside a Denver nightclub. According to witnesses — including Marshall — the events that led to the shooting involved several disputes between convicted shooter Willie Clark’s gang and Marshall and, some testified, Marshall’s cousin, Blair Clark.
“It became a point where I thought that’s who I was,” Marshall said. “My wife used to say to me, ‘I want my old Brandon back.’ She used to say to me that I am not affectionate, I am not there emotionally and I never understood that.”
Marshall listed his individual NFL accomplishments and the major material possessions that come from being one of the highest-paid NFL players, then said, “I have not enjoyed one part of it.”
He said he was diagnosed this spring at Boston’s McLean Hospital after recognizing something was wrong during the 2010 season, his first with the Dolphins.
“I would like to thank the Dolphins because the way they handled me was so professional and made me feel like family because they kept a lot of our issues in house,” Marshall said. “Like I said, there is a lot of validity behind how I felt, and my actions and my behavior was inappropriate at times. There was a lot of conflict with me and the coaches, and the way I handled it was inappropriate and I react at a high emotion. There is one day I had all right to be [ticked], and I just exploded and I told everybody how I felt. And then afterwards I felt really bad. I went to [running back] Ricky [Williams] and said, ‘Do you think I have something wrong with me because I can’t understand why I can control myself?’ Ricky said ‘You say the things that we all want to say but won’t ever say.’ During the season that was my first time I had so much conflict like that.”
Marshall’s most recent brush with trouble came in April, when Broward Sherriff’s Office officers were called to Marshall’s Southwest Ranches home. They arrested Michi Nogami-Marshall, Marshall’s wife. The original police report stated Marshall’s wife said she stabbed him in the stomach in self-defense, and there was no blood on broken glass to support Marshall’s claim of falling over a vase. Marshall reiterated the vase claim to the Broward State Attorney’s Office in June. Friday, the office announced no charges would be filed.
“I want to make clear my wife did not take a knife and stab me,” Marshall said. “I made the glass, which had my blood and skin still on it, available to the detectives so they could make the right decision.”
Marshall claimed that as his wife was being arrested, “she had this look in her eyes of sadness, confusion and pain. And she told me, ‘Someone will learn from this story.’ I thought that was very powerful for someone who was being wrongfully arrested to have that much strength to say.”
Upon his hospital release, Marshall said he called his personal videographer to his house and started filming a documentary on BPD. He said he will continue with individual therapy once a week during the season and group therapy once or twice a week.
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