Buddha and the Borderline

by Kiera Van Gelder

  “I don’t know how I’m going to sleep at night now,” she says, “knowing you’re like this!”

  “When you come home, I’ll give you some of my sleeping pills.”

  “This is serious!”

  I wonder what she thinks is more serious, my current nightmare or how it makes her feel. While my father knows about my situation and keeps his distance, my mother dives into my despair without an oxygen tank, only to surface minutes later, hauling ass for shore. I once had a dream that the two of us were trapped in the wheel of a water mill. We tried desperately to extract ourselves and save each other, but one of us was always dragged under the water, only to emerge and watch helplessly as the other got pulled down.

  All year I’ve been waiting for my mother to return—and dreading it, because as soon as she understands the full extent of my situation, it will practically destroy her. Our fragility shatters each other, over and over again. And yet I need her. I always need her. Her presence is as soothing as it is distressing. I still have the urge to crawl into her lap, to feel the soft skin of her cheek, to have her hold me.

  I feel like I’m driving a spike into her when I tell her about my hospitalization. “What about the therapy?” she asks, “and the new medications? And Anna, what does Anna think about all of this?”

  By the end of the conversation, my mother is crying, I’m crying, and we both say, “I don’t know what to do.”

  A new set of groups is added to my MAP schedule: life transitions, behavioral scheduling, and aftercare planning, all preparation for my imminent discharge as soon as my insurance company decides to pull the plug. Scott gives me another two weeks, three tops, before the gavel comes down. I’m now considered a “heavy utilizer” of mental health services, and apparently, the more you need services, the less willing insurance is to pay for them. I pretty much keep to myself except for two girls I’ve met, Cait and Sadie. Both decided to change their names when they entered the MAP program, so I have no idea what their real names are. I consider doing this too, but in true borderline fashion, every day I come up with a different name. Todd is also back, looking foppishly boyish and more clear-eyed than before. I try to keep my distance.

  When not meticulously mapping out my future life in groups, I work with Scott on applying the CBT skills in real-life situations. Since anxiety cripples me whenever I venture into public or I’m under pressure, I try intentionally exposing myself to small doses of these triggers. It’s apparently a tried and true behavioral therapy method. If you gradually expose yourself to a cue that triggers anxiety while using new coping techniques, eventfully you’ll become desensitized and react differently. So I take a bus to Harvard Square. Once there, sweating, dizzy, and with my heart pounding, I hide in the bathroom of the Harvard Coop bookstore. When I can breathe evenly again, I sit in one of the chairs on the third floor, near the psychology section, and do a worksheet rating my thoughts and feelings. Later, at Whole Foods Market, when I want to kick the person who lingers in front of me over the goat cheese, I take deep breaths, pull out a bracelet with textured beads, and, closing my eyes, focus on my fingers and not the flashes of violence that streak through me. This is called grounding. Afterward, I do another worksheet, called a mood monitor. I have binders full of them by now.

  It must be working a little, because I feel calmer when I go out, and Scott is pleased. If it weren’t for Todd, I’d also consider myself as having made progress. Unfortunately, Todd seems tempting to me again, and the more time I spend with Sadie and Cait, the more bawdy I’m becoming. We sit on the grassy hillock outside the MAP entrance during breaks and compare notes on sexual adventures. Sadie and I discover we’re fairly well matched in terms of sleeping indiscriminately with inappropriate men and, more uniquely, remembering the name and circumstances of every one of them.

  Todd ventures over to us on occasion to smoke a cigarette and listen to our girl talk. One afternoon he declares, “My old girlfriend said that having sex with me when I think I’m Jesus is the best she’s ever had.”

  Oh no. I’m all over that one: “What did she mean by that?” “How did you feel when it happened?” “How often do these Jesus episodes occur?”

  After Todd stumbles off, Sadie puts a hand on my arm, immediately reading my intentions. “Chicks, not dicks,” she says. “At least here.”

  But I’m under the influence. Something about his youth—and the buzzing manic energy that no amount of mood stabilizers can suppress—feeds me. I’m back under the tree with the sun on my face, intensely alive. I truly hope it’s just a passing crush, but I know I’m in trouble because the next morning I wake up happy. Not happy with contentment or satisfaction; more of an excited, giddy rush to take a shower so I can get out and see a boy. I dig through my bottomless closet of identities and pull out a hippie dress and sandals, and if I hadn’t thrown out my patchouli oil in disgust some years back, I’d be applying it liberally.

  In CBT group, Sadie sees me and starts singing “Kumbaya.” There’s a bounce in my step, and all is well until I finally glimpse Todd in the hallway midmorning. Poised to flirt, I’m crushed when he passes by without looking at me. It’s hard to tell if his eyes are unfocused or if he’s intentionally not looking. Either way, I’m devastated. It’s like being on a trapeze and reaching for the next swing only to find you’ve leapt into emptiness. No, it’s worse. You expect the handoff, and instead there’s a flamethrower, blasting you with fire. It’s sensitivity to rejection on steroids. This upswing straight into the maw of pain makes assertiveness group difficult to follow, especially because my response to rejection involves more than intolerable pain; it calls up an even deeper desire for whoever rejects me. So now I’m obsessed with Todd. It doesn’t matter that he lives in a mental hospital, that I’ve only spoken to him twice, or that he’s incapable of basic conversation. Trapped in need, I just hope he’ll revert back to psychosis so I can have sex with Jesus.

  “You’re vulnerable,” Scott says when I meet with him later that day.

  I’m shaking and crying. “Why does this always happen?” It’s more than a silly crush; it’s a reflection of some sort of deep trouble—a desire that eclipses reason and takes me over, shapes me, and narrows all of reality to that one pinpoint.

  “You merge with Todd when he’s around. You’ve got to practice grounding and get yourself back.”

  I nod and snuffle and go off to another CBT group. There, we fill out a chain analysis worksheet for a current problem. In each link of the chain, you put down a thought, feeling, or action that leads you to the place of pain. I title mine “The Borderline Chain of Desire.” Here’s how it goes: Connection. Disconnection. Craving. Despair. Self- hatred. Suicidality. Desperate attempt to reconnect. More rejection.

  I always start out flying high with lust in that first link in the chain, but then end up with the chain around my neck, weighing me down with self-hatred and despair. I have to get over Todd. If I’m going to feel suicidal over anyone, let it at least be someone who can speak in compound sentences.

  As I’m the only borderline in my new trio with Cait and Sadie, I find it funny I’m the only one who hasn’t changed my name. Then again, they’re not the ones who instantly resolved, after hearing about Todd’s sex life, to wear Birkenstocks and stop shaving their armpits. Since breaking up with Bennet (and Alexis), my identity has grown nebulous again, waiting to take another shape. Sometimes my identity forms in response to longing, and other times in response to revulsion: swings in self-perception decorated with music and clothes. I’m a bad-ass and wear latex; I’m a hippie and wear Indian prints. The various parts of me cannot seem to coexist. And as the summer progresses and my life keeps bottoming out, my connection to the Kiera who tries so hard, who longs for healing, is steadily dwindling.

  Todd’s somewhat of a last gasp. I’m not interested in listening to Bob Marley telling me to “lively up” myself. The only music that satisfies me is Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor’s voice crying through industrial r
hythms. In the August evenings, I lie on my bed with earphones, letting his laments roll through me like unrepentant thunderstorms. I envy the courage that carries his voice into the world. He doesn’t berate himself for pain and anger; he howls. And this delights me, even though I feel ashamed when my own rage comes to the surface. My anger doesn’t signify courage; it’s just more confirmation that I’m bad.

  I try to not let go of the mindfulness practice. I observe the emotions crest and clash, tidal in the coming and going of perspectives. Opposing forces battle within me: I want to get better. I want to die. I want to be loved. I want to spit in the face of everyone I see. Such drastic shifts exhaust me, and I know they baffle others. And it’s gaining momentum again. My mercurial self is clamoring for a foothold, and I’m slipping. Borderlines are experts in wrestling with demons; the problem is, we always seem to lose. Fight long enough, and it only makes sense to join the demons. What other choice is there?

  Friday night after MAP, as I lie on my bed listening to Nine Inch Nails with the whole empty weekend looming before me, I think, You’ve tried to get help. Look where that fucking got you. Then I sit up in bed and understand something very clearly: If I want to survive, I have to stop turning my energy against myself—stop being the worker bee, the supplicant always feeling helpless and asking for help, the one who desires, unrequited. I have to transform this despair and anger into power.

  The last thing Scott told me before the weekend was that I need to reclaim myself and my power. I agree, though perhaps not in the sense he intended. My borderline “unstable sense of self” notwithstanding, there is some power growing in me, shaped in response to my inner conviction that nothing can save me, that I’m basically fucked and not getting better. Many things can happen when you’re in a no-win situation: You can completely fall apart, feeling helpless and victimized. You can run away and hope the world changes. Or you can rise like a fury, go dark, and be the pain—which I’ve done before. In tenth grade, I woke up one day, cut off all my hair, threw out my clothes, and wore only black. People said I was trying to get attention, that I was purposely oppositional and needed more medication. But if the world is closed to you and all you feel is pain, why keep pretending?

  I go down to the basement and open up a suitcase. Inside are the outfits I wear only when I’m in this state: latex and leather and PVC; corsets, gloves, chokers, and thigh-high boots. There’s a club in Cambridge called ManRay, where all the fetishists come out on Friday nights. It’s a carnival of flesh and spectacle, role reversal, and pain turned into pleasure. That’s where I need to go. That’s where I can be myself as I am right now. In fact, I’m right back in the latex I wore when Bennet and I met, my wrists and neck encircled in leather, eyes carved black with eyeliner. As I pass through the vestibule into the club, I already feel safer. I feel no social anxiety amidst the brooding goths, latex dolls, and men with dog collars, and the pulse of industrial music and smell of clove cigarettes sends me into a trancelike state almost immediately. It’s been a long time since my last visit—since before I met Bennet and took out the tongue and nipple rings, before I fell into that particular hole.

  In the enveloping darkness, I sit on a stool along the wall overlooking the dance floor. I sip tonic water and watch two girls in lingerie and a bald man in leather grind together. Wandering into the larger room, I sit on a velvet couch and stare at the video screens above me, showing endless loops of women undressing and binding each other up in plastic wrap. In a far corner, a heavy woman in fishnet stockings secures a man’s wrists and ankles to a wooden cross, then draws her leather riding crop over his chest. A group of people cluster around, some waiting for their turn.

  I didn’t come here to be hurt. Physical pain isn’t a turn-on for me. My compulsion to cut has an entirely different motivation—in my world, pain simply relieves another form of pain. In my heart, I don’t want to hurt myself, or anyone else, but this is like being at a family reunion, and the sadists and masochists are my cousins. I can be fierce without having to lash out. I can feel sexual and be in control. As the night progresses, the crowd thickens. On the floor, a mass of bodies begins to shift like a school of fish. I step inside the swirl and pound of bodies, and a certain magic happens—my core spins and loosens. In this amniotic fluid of rhythm and movement, I rejoin the human realm. More than sex, more than love, this connects me…as long as no one comes too close. As soon as I sense a man keeping his eye on me for too long, I move. Because I also remember this about myself: As soon as I’m touched, all of my power drains away and I’ll become a supplicant again. Tonight I’ve severed the part of myself that needs someone else’s touch. But if I am touched, it will awaken. And I’ll be helpless again.

  My mother has returned. And as soon as she unpacks, she comes to Waltham to take me out to lunch. Her arms are filled with presents she’s gathered during her year away: silver bangles, embroidered scarves, a carved box, and earrings with turquoise stones. We go for Thai food and sit in a window booth facing Moody Street. She asks if I’ve gone out recently, and I say I went dancing at a club on Friday night, which I haven’t done in a long time.

  “You need to get out more,” she says. “If you only go out rarely, each time is a small trauma. Go more often and you’ll grow used to it.” I thank her for that insight into my agoraphobia. “And not just to gyrate in dark rooms,” she adds. “Try to actually socialize. Talk to people.”

  The waitress appears with fragrant, steaming dishes. After she puts them down, she and my mother discuss the street food in Thailand. The waitress is an exuberant young woman, and her laughter lingers in my mother’s eyes.

  “She’d make a good friend,” my mother smiles. “She’s so…positive.” When she sees I’m not sharing her enthusiasm, she shrugs. “I just like people, I guess.”

  Well, it’s not like I don’t like people; I just find them disturbing and can’t manage their effects on me, positive or negative. It’s like having too many nerves on the social end of things.

  I can’t seem to get my mother to understand this. Her eyes delight in the world, and she thrives on discovering and sharing. This is one of the many reasons we can’t reach each other. In darkness, she gropes. And when I name those darknesses with the one tool I can always call on, language, she’d rather paint color into the void, hang a still life over the hole with a big sign for me: “Enter Here.”

  “I’m just not comfortable with you referring to yourself as ‘mentally ill,’” she comments after I’ve given her the full update on my current treatment and status. I emphasize that I really am sick, not just in a funk. “Calling yourself mentally ill… It’s so…you know… If you were schizophrenic, I’d understand. But you’re not like that. I think you’re just depressed again. And it’s probably situational depression. Losing the job and that boyfriend depressed you, but I think you can do something to change that.”

  I find I’m eating quite fast to quell the feeling in my stomach. Thank god for my medication. Otherwise I’m sure I’d be screaming, “Don’t you get it?!” and sobbing right now. Instead, I hoover my pad thai.

  “If you call yourself mentally ill,” she continues, “you’ll just be labeling yourself, and probably, when you’re around other people, you’ll feel different.”

  “But I am different! Some people might consider me lucky to be alive, given how suicidal and self-destructive I’ve been.” At that, my mother looks so upset that I say no more. We’ve already lost my brother. Am I rubbing it in her face that her remaining child has a recurring death wish, and for no reason that she can understand? Yet I need my mother to recognize what I’m experiencing, even if it scares the shit out of her.

  I don’t know how to make that happen without causing more pain for both of us.

  9

  Flying the Coop

  September arrives and another MAP discharge is imminent. I have three more weeks before I’m interviewed for the new DBT program, and Scott proposes that I transition into a low-stress, part-t
ime job in the meantime. Both he and my mother suggest working at a bookstore. That makes sense: a quiet place with books, intellectual types wandering in and out; it just might work. The most logical choice is the Harvard Coop. From the amount of time I spend there, ducking into the women’s bathroom, I probably already look familiar to the staff. And it’s in Harvard Square, where I’ve spent half my life wandering the stores and streets. I’m hired as soon as I drop off the application and feel a moment of complete terror as I realize that I’m going to be back in the world—and at the same time, cut loose from MAP. I remind myself that I’m in emotion mind. The facts are simple: I’m going to work at a bookstore. I’ve done retail before. In fact, after every hospital discharge, I’ve been scraped off the ground by some store or restaurant and installed behind the counter.

  In the transition groups, people talked about “recovery jobs,” and that’s what this is. I tell myself, I’m going to take this job because I have to learn how to be a part of life again. I have to train in managing my feelings and reactions, and not let my distorted thinking and emotions control me.

  I receive a quick orientation with a group of new hires, and then we’re assigned departments. I’m given a coveted main-floor position with fiction, memoir, and poetry sections. “Don’t worry if there are lines,” the manager instructs us. “It’ll take a couple hours to learn the ropes, but just take your time and don’t be afraid to ask for help.”