Suspicious Minds

by David Mark

  She finds herself furious that the smell of freshly-baked scones cannot be trapped in an aerosol and sold as a room deodorizer. Biscuits too. Would that be so hard? Home cooking, perhaps infused with a subtle trace of furniture polish and that particular, warm-dust fug of vacuuming. The charade wouldn’t fool him long, but he might at least look briefly satisfied as he walked through the front door. She can live for months on such minute glimpses of gratification.

  Just bake the scones, Lizzie. Tomorrow, just bake the scones. It will make him happy. You’ll feel good …

  She scoffs at herself, offended at the suggestion. Feel good? Here? In this excuse for a life? Trapped with a man whose first worry would be about the curtains if she ran past him in flames?

  The little voice takes over, a swirl of memory and projection; a legion of tongues, all oozing scorn.

  There’s no happiness here, Lizzie. You’re stupid for thinking it. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He’s right. You’d never get anybody else. Nobody would have you. Nobody would put up with you. Look at you. Getting a bit of a jelly-belly there, aren’t you? Why’s there all that darkness under your eyes? You look like a panda. You had such lovely skin when you met and now, well, you’re all sort of pale. Damp bread. Doughy. Are you using a different shampoo? It looks a bit, well, greasy, I suppose …

  Lizzie presses her face into the cushion. It’s the patterned one – the one she’s allowed to cry into. Her tears and snot and wine-soaked spit are too astringent for the velour fabric of the other fabrics. He doesn’t object to her crying per se – that’s what women do, after all – but he doesn’t know why she has to spoil some perfectly good scatter cushions with her endless snivelling.

  The conversation in Lizzie’s head is a constant. It plays like talk radio, dropping in and out of her hearing according to the quality of outside stimulus. Here, now, she can hear damnably well. His voice. Hers. All the other little Lizzie’s that live inside. The toddler: tantrum-prone and lethally inquisitive. The moody adolescent, all huffs and hormones. The student, battling to change the world and railing against inequity, immovable in her righteousness. The twenty-something, suffused with regret; the wish that she’d listened, made better choices, become more. And then the reality. The face she wears for the world. Thirty-three. Childless, save her partner’s eight-year-old daughter, Anya. A dabbler. Not one to finish anything. Good at a few pointless things but feckless at anything useful. Crap, really. Just crap.

  Shut up. Stop. Stop.

  She uncurls herself. Feels horribly exposed. She has toddler knees. Fat feet. Dimply hips and buttocks. She doesn’t want to look at them. Draws them up again and covers the offending objects with her big, baggy T-shirt. Hugs herself, a wound spring.

  She glances at the clock on the mantelpiece, trying to work out how many hours of sleep she can still get if she goes back to bed and tries again. It’s 3.06 a.m. So late it’s almost early. Her lips tingle. Fingers and toes. Panic, rising. Temper flushing her face and neck.

  Not fair. Not fair!

  It wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried. Lain there, still and silent as death, listening to him snoring, his wet lips opening and closing like a lamprey. If he’d held her she would have drifted off, she’s sure of it. If he’d just spooned up behind her and laid an arm over her shoulder, or pushed his nose against the nape of her neck, she’s sure she could have let go. But he doesn’t like to be touched in bed. She’s too hot, he says. Too grabby. She makes him clammy. He can’t breathe. She always makes too much noise. She doesn’t snore, but she makes the bed wobble when she turns over and it makes him feel seasick. He flinches when her feet accidentally brush his hairy shins. Has started to leave out magazines advertising the merits of twin beds.

  Don’t. Don’t be mean about him. He works hard. He drives an hour to work and an hour home again and he puts in proper graft in between.

  ‘Bollocks,’ she whispers, in response to her own inner voice, and grinds her face into her knees lest any other disloyal utterances surge free like bats from a cave.

  This has been her night-time routine for months now. After they fight, he falls asleep; peacefully, quickly, untroubled by fear of consequence. She, exhausted, cried out, aching to her bones, laying there still as death, until his breathing finds the ursine rumble that tells her it is safe to slither out from beneath the bedclothes and tiptoe downstairs. She knows which steps creak. Which lights are bright enough to wake him. She boils water in a saucepan on the hob, lest the rumble of the kettle should wake him. Makes tea, dropping the used bag in the windowsill composter of which he is inordinately proud. Then she pads through to the living room and sits in the half darkness. She has found a way to make the TV screen emit a low blue light, and if she sits close enough she can read, or write, or stare into the surface of her tea and watch the bubbles pop like dreams.

  … I mean, what do you want? You’ve got a nice place to live. A car. You get a job whenever you bother your arse to fill in an application form. I work hard to provide for us. You said you wanted to be, you know, a stay-at-home mum – even though we decided against kids. A housewife, then. A proper partner. I was all for it, remember? And I come home and nothing’s done. You said it would all be lovely. You bought all those cookbooks and I got you the blender and the sewing machine and all that stuff you said you needed. And you just lay there, playing with your phone, causing mischief, buying stuff. That card was for emergencies. I’m going to have to take it off you, you can’t be trusted. We’ll go back to the system as it was. I’ll put cash in envelopes – mark them for specific items. If you need anything extra, ask me. I’m not an ogre …

  She pulls the cushion to her face again. Bites down until her jaw aches.

  By the skirting board, her phone bleeps. It gives her a thrill of pure excitement; a sudden surge of yellow-gold adrenaline. She feels high, suddenly. Life is awesome. Endorphins flood her system. Good memories rise. He’d smiled at her in the way he used to, hadn’t he? Back at the beginning, when he fancied her: when she wasn’t mad, but kooky, and he liked the way she spoke and got her words wrong and her temper tantrums were endearing rather than a symptom of something dangerously wrong in her head. He’d smiled, hadn’t he? Actually grinned. What had she said? What had made the connection? Christ, it was pancakes. She’d been riffing on a theme, warming to her subject, telling him he would never understand her, never really care, that he was too selfish to truly understand what it felt like to be a passenger in their own existence, and she’d thrown words like rocks.

  You should be with your mum. Your dad’s not going to last forever – when he pops his clogs you can move her in. Cook for you, clean for you, tell you you’re her golden child, make you pancakes with syrup on a Sunday morning after you’ve had a lie-in and a toss …

  But he’d smiled. It had been OK, hadn’t it? It had been a smile that said she was funny. That even after all the ugliness of the past few months, he still thought her way with words endearing.

  She shakes her head at herself. Shushes the voices, the memories, the accusations, as she settles back on to the sofa, clutching the phone like a talisman. It’s her third this year. He smashed one, wordlessly, methodically, when he found her texting her ex. She lost the other. Left it on the roof of the car while laden down with groceries, trying to fit bags and boxes in the boot of her ridiculous little fridge-on-wheels. Drove off and didn’t notice its absence until she tried to call him through the hands-free device on the dashboard. It had felt like bereavement.

  The light of the screen illuminates her face. Her eyes, brown like Brazil nuts, sparkle cerise, magenta and blue, as she navigates her way to the icon for Bipped. The website was recommended by the doctors. A forum for people with her condition; a safe, secure online environment, free of judgment: a place to share stories, experiences, to feel less alone. If it were a village, Lizzie would move there. She’s addicted to Bipped. It feels like reading her own ghostwritten life story. She hasn’t had the confidence to contribute an article yet
, but she has given a few crumbs of experiential wisdom to those other users seeking advice and insight. And the advice has been well-received. People have said nice things. One user, Derian_B, said she was an inspiration. That had left her giddy. She’d texted her sister about it. Told her she was thinking of retraining as a psychotherapist – that she wanted to help people, do something that mattered, turn her own journey into a teaching tool. Carly had sent back an eye-rolling emoji, and some dispiriting sisterly advice.

  Just get yourself well. You took three packets of ibuprofen six weeks ago, Liz. You’ve only just been diagnosed. Remember, you’ve got officially certifiable levels of impulsivity and paranoia! Just take one step at a time. When can I come visit? Cx

  It had well and truly popped her bubble of good feeling. Pissed on her bonfire good and proper. She always was a mood-hoover. She considers her sister. Sneers, nasty and hot. Yeah, OK, so it couldn’t have been easy for Carly, who has problems of her own, but they were meant to be family, after all. Sisters, together against the world, like in the books and movies. It was no different when they were kids. Sure, Carly had been the one to find her, to hold her legs up as she dangled in their shared bedroom, turning blue and slack-jawed beneath the light flex, but it wasn’t Liz’s fault. She hadn’t planned it that way. It was Mum who was meant to see. Carly shouldn’t have been bunking off school. And she didn’t have to act like such a hero after it was all over, did she? She’s thirty-one now, two years younger than Liz, and still acting like she’s the sensible one.

  She stares, hungrily, at the home page. Feels a warmth spread through her as she logs in to the members’ area and sees that another fourteen people have marked her response to an ethical conundrum as ‘useful’. She feels as though she is standing on a podium, clutching flowers, a medal around her neck and the national anthem carrying her spirits heavenwards; a mermaid surging on a crash of spray.

  She re-reads the thread where she has made her mark, a query from a frazzled husband, posted under the tagline: BPD Partner – I Can’t Win!

  I don’t know what to do. Whatever I try to say or do it’s always wrong. She won’t accept any responsibility for anything. I was her knight in shining armour, the person who made her feel things nobody else could. She was so in love with me it was like being consumed. Now she tells me I make her sick. That I’m nothing. She says she’s been seeing other men and that they’d be better parents to our three gorgeous daughters. What do I do? I can’t stand the thought of abandoning her when it’s clear she needs me most but she doesn’t see she has a problem. The temper tantrums are because I provoke her or say or do stupid things. I try so hard but I’m at the end of my rope. I just need somebody to tell me it will get better.

  Liz feels his pain. Understands the frustration. The desperation. The absolute willingness to do whatever it takes to help his beloved wife get well. She’d replied, thumb moving over the keypad in a blur:

  You sound like a wonderful husband and father. I’m sure it must hurt horribly when she splits on you like this but I know from my own life that her biggest fear is abandonment and that she says hurtful things because she’s frightened of being hurt herself. Try putting boundaries in place, but most of all, don’t let her ever think you’re losing love for her. I can’t promise it will come good, but people with BPD aren’t lost causes. We just feel things to such an extent that it makes us a little mad. Stick in there.

  She’d re-read the words of advice a dozen times before posting it. A spelling mistake and she’d be lashing herself until she hit bone. Felt pretty damn good about what she’d come up with. She wasn’t entirely sure she agreed with herself, but the poor chap needed to hear something positive. He’d earned it, hadn’t he? God, how she wishes she could find a post from Jay on one of these forums. Some sign he actually wants things to work.

  The thought veers off as she considers the new raft of possibilities. She wonders whether there is a future in this. Whether she could become an online guidance counsellor for those with BPD. She can see herself; cat-eye glasses and a sensible baggy cardigan over a tight vest, dispensing earnest wisdom and insights to a growing global audience. The go-to girl for Borderline Personality Disorder – a regular on daytime TV; perhaps a column in a newspaper or a Sunday magazine. She makes a mental note to check whether such things still exist. Whether agony aunts are now thought of as outdated and sexist. Wonders, briefly, whether she would be deemed a bad feminist for playing up to patriarchal stereotypes about women being the more compassionate, gentler sex.

  She sits back, fingers at her mouth, beating out a little rhythm on her lips: three letters, repeated over and over, faster and faster, like a train.

  BPD

  BPD

  BPD …

  It has been six weeks since the diagnosis. Six weeks since she found a suit that finally fitted. The psychiatrist had given her eight full minutes of his time. Sat with her in the little green room and changed her life: the whole thing taking place two floors up from the same emergency room where she’d had her guts washed out, where charcoal had been pumped into her gut to bind the undigested painkillers – where she woke up miserable beyond enduring at having failed to kill herself properly.

  ‘I’ve been through your notes. You’ve been treated for depression. Evidence of self-harm in childhood. The abuse, the instability in your home life, the history of mental illness in the family. Textbook, really. What you told me about these impulsive acts, the huge highs and lows, the inability to rationalize your moods. Have you heard of something called Borderline Personality Disorder?’

  She hadn’t. Didn’t like the sound of it, but wanted, at once, to know more.

  He’d given her a leaflet and told her she was going to be put on a waiting list for Dialectical Behavioural Therapy. He’d apologized for how long it would take. Said it could be eight or nine months before she’d get an appointment, waiting lists being what they were. He fancied he could help her himself, but only as a private patient. Sixty quid per session, but absolutely vital for her recovery …

  She’d said no, naturally. Jay was already cross with her. She’d promised last time that she wouldn’t be so silly ever again. He’d had to get cover at work. Had to leave an important meeting. He wasn’t one hundred per cent sure how much more of this he could take.

  Lizzie squeezes herself tight, elbows drawn in, phone so close to her face she can smell her perfume on the speaker. She is suddenly so afraid that he will leave her that it is all she can do not to rush upstairs and bludgeon him with a bedside lamp. At least then he’d never get the chance to say the words; to make flesh her worst imaginings – the godawful moment when he tells her it’s over, she’s on her own. He’s threatened it plenty.

  ‘You won’t be able to sponge off me any longer. And nobody else will put up with your shit. Then you’ll really have something to feel suicidal about …’

  She re-reads the description of her condition. She already knows it off by heart but there is something comforting in the words.

  Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a disorder of mood and how a person interacts with others.

  The symptoms of BPD can be grouped into 4 main areas:

  • Emotional instability – the psychological term for this is affective dysregulation

  • Disturbed patterns of thinking or perception – cognitive distortions or perceptual distortions

  • Impulsive behaviour

  • Intense but unstable relationships with others

  The symptoms of a personality disorder may range from mild to severe and usually emerge in adolescence, persisting into adulthood.

  Liz’s eyes start to droop. The words are a lullaby. She’s not alone. It’s not her fault. There are others out there dealing with the same problems as she is. She sinks into the welcoming hug of people like her. People who understand. People who know she’s ill, not horrible; a victim, not an abuser or a bitch.

  The phone beeps. She jumps, genuinely startled, as it vibrates in
her hand. It’s Jay, upstairs, in their bed.

  I presume you’re downstairs, talking to all your hangers-on and groupies. Do what you need. I don’t want to fight. I’ve done the sums and I think this counselling is worth it in the long run. So if you want to find a therapist, I’ll pay for it. I want you fixed. This isn’t what I signed up for.

  Inside her head, an eruption of carnival noise; crackle and static and a sudden surge of feeling; possibility, hope, fear – she feels sick, suddenly, as if an unwanted tongue is being forced into her mouth, and all she wants to do is run up to Jay and smother him with kisses and say thank you, she’s so lucky to have a man like him, and she’s so sorry about what she said and please don’t leave me, please don’t lose patience, please don’t let me go …

  She makes a promise to herself, as she falls into a sleep black as treacle, that she will make him pancakes when she wakes.

  TWO

  From: lizziez_22@hotmail.com

  Sent: 10 April 2020 04.46:23

  To: Anita_Hood@yahoo.com

  Subject: Re: FW: New Enquiry from Elizabeth Zahavi via Counselling Directory

  Hi.

  I think I need your help. A few weeks ago I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) following an act of self-harm/attempted suicide/cry-for-help/etc. I have been through some traumatic experiences in my personal life and feel as though my coping strategies are simply not working any more. I have been really struggling to stabilize my mood and have been feeling erratic, paranoid and anxious all the time. There are some incidents in my past I want to work through. Do you think you could help? My partner has been a true rock for me throughout all this and I want to be able to give him the person he deserves. I’ve done lots of reading on the condition and so many people seem to think that people with BPD are a lost cause. They say we’re manipulative and unmanageable and that people around us should head for the hills, but that isn’t what he wants and I don’t think I do. I’ve browsed through a lot of possible therapists but you certainly seem to have a lot of expertise in the field. Weird, I know, but I also like the necklace you’re wearing in your picture on the website! I’m sorry for rambling on – please do message me back at your earliest convenience. I’m not working at the moment so am free to see you as soon as practical. I live in Durham but am willing to travel if it speeds up the process. Thank you.