As the grain of his fingerprints rubbed against my hairlessness, I kept my eyes on him. Both of us were breathing shallowly. A warm panic prickled my insides, and I looked to my brother. He was oblivious, staring slack-jawed at the TV, only his eyes and the sheen of his hair gathering light. What did I feel, with the babysitter’s fingers caressing my vagina? Could it have been arousal? Do children even feel such things? Why didn’t I cry or push his hand away? As we sat in a bubble of suspended motion, inside I felt an incomprehensible mix of sensations: warmth, prickling, panicky, hopeful—for what? I remained silent, waiting for the next caress. Keeping his eyes on the TV screen, the babysitter slowly moved one of my legs out toward the edge of the couch.
A moment later, the front door opened and my mother strode in with her cheeks stained red from the winter air. The hand under the covers froze, pulling back just as my mother bent over me to plant a kiss on my forehead. I pretended to be asleep.
That year our town was awash in patriotism. American flags draped houses, snapped from poles, and festooned every light post along Main Street. Fife music and the rat-a-tat-tat of drums formed a backdrop to the firing of cannons as my brother and I joined the crowd to watch the bicentennial parade. Somehow, two hundred years of freedom were commemorated by clowns tumbling past and throwing fistfuls of candy. We scrambled into the parade to snatch candy from under the feet of the marching band. Across the street, a house on a sloping hill gave out free cola in cloudy glass bottles.
We lived a quarter mile away from the Old North Bridge, in Concord, Massachusetts, where the shot heard round the world was fired. My brother and I shared a room on the apartment’s second floor. Ben needed a nightlight and I didn’t, yet he always fell asleep first. Floating above his nasal breath, I didn’t want to close my eyes. Not because I feared a boogeyman; I was afraid to close my eyes because if I did, I’d start to float. Unmoored inside myself, the black against my eyelids would expand like the space of a starless night, and I’d be utterly alone in it—like those astronauts in the movies, cast adrift into the empty void of space. That’s what closing my eyes felt like when I was six. I wasn’t afraid of the dark; I was terrified of being inside myself.
When I ask my mother about it now, she insists I was a happy child. Certainly I was brash when it came to climbing trees, and I enjoyed jumping on the mattress despite repeated orders not to do it. But I remember it differently. Even when I was that young, I was always guarding against nakedness and feeling the eyes of others penetrating me and branding me as somehow different.
I remember grasping Ben’s hand as we entered circles of children playing in this new neighborhood, and wondering what they saw in me. My breath shortened and my heart stuttered. Even in a simple game of tag, the complexities overwhelmed me. Not so much how to play; I knew that one person was “it” and that this person must try to pass the “it-ness” on. Chase and tag. Run and shout. But why was I chosen? Why did the small boy with the flared collar single me out and go after me with such force? And when I was “it,” why did the older kids wander off to kick a ball across the wide lawn by the mailbox? That troubled me, but not nearly much as when I accidentally grabbed the ribbon on a girl’s shirt and it came off in my hand. It seemed I always played too rough, even as I was sensitive to the slightest gestures from others. The little girl angrily snatched her ribbon back and said she was going to tell her father. I was left on the grass, howling inside.
It was nothing—and yet everything.
Some alchemy happened then: touch and absence, words and silence, the reconfiguration of reference points at a time I lacked both inner and outer ground. Not everyone who’s been sexually abused as a child develops BPD, but for me this was a critical juncture because before that I was simply a sensitive child. Maybe I lacked a certain solidity of self. I probably was more socially anxious than many other children. If I really wanted to start at the beginning, maybe I’d list the numerous times we moved for my father’s Air Force job: the rented houses in Italy and Holland, the interim stays in hotels and friends’ apartments; surely that must upset a child’s world. And when I left home myself, at seventeen, I continued in this unsettled way, never able to abide too long in one place, a perfect example of Freud’s notion of repetition compulsion.
I wish now I remembered birthday parties and the sweetness of frosting, good-night kisses and the crayon art of second grade. But those memories are eclipsed by something larger: the flickering blue light of the television, the shivering and pounding heart at the touch of a pale hand. I’ve always known that touch marked me. Not so much because it hurt or harmed—though it may have, gentle as it was. His hand on me was almost like the redemptive touch of some dark god. From a swirling nothingness I became the imprint of his gesture. I felt myself take shape in the touch of another.
I wish now I could say it was an isolated incident, but that night in front of the TV was just the first time. Sometimes my mother would leave me at his house, just down the street, for safekeeping. And there, in his room, he would lift me onto his bed and take my clothes off until I was lying naked on the sheets with his large hands passing over my skin. Touching me, he’d murmur, “This seems to be fine. Arms in perfect shape. Neck okay…” And then move on, with a doctor’s detachment, to my legs, and then inside me, no part of me left unexplored. I didn’t think we were playing doctor; it was too real, and too important, for make-believe. His examinations were a test, and if I passed, he would keep me. Under his touch I became a perfect specimen, made to be loved, held, and stroked.
In time, I discovered the immensity of his erection. And when I did, I couldn’t stop looking and touching. Before we’d moved here from Holland, I’d spent long afternoon hours dressing up as a princess waiting to be rescued by a knight. My mother set up the record player with Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, the only music I’d listen to. At the end of the record, the needle would find the clear, silent space and then lift and swing back, starting the dance again, filling the air with ruffled taffeta and graceful swans.
In the babysitter’s bed, I could hear the music. I was the princess in the high tower, finally united with my prince, and I wanted to stay locked up together forever, feeling the warm tingle from his hands and his eyes on me. He’d ask how I felt: “And this?… And this?” I existed at the center, and my body kept him tied to me. He never looked away. Why return to the ground, without my prince? What awaited me but a lonely walk home, past oblivious fathers mowing their lawns and mean children playing tag? In that curtained room, I chose captivity over freedom, thinking it meant I’d never be alone. There’s no way I could have foreseen that becoming this child lover would trap me in an endless cycle of unmet need and desperate attempts to secure more love, each time offering myself to others in ways that only brought more secrets and shame.
Until I entered therapy at age fourteen, I didn’t tell anyone about that babysitter. I simply didn’t think it was important. And yet look at me now: a woman in her thirties who still longs to be touched so that I can become yet another imprint. I want to cry for that little girl now, but I can’t. I turn to Taylor at night hoping he can be lover, father, doctor, and friend all at once, but of course that’s an impossible dream. I try to explain my dilemma to him, how I am both child and adult, supplicant and dominatrix—sometimes all in the span of an hour. He wants to know what he can do to help, but I cannot answer. Deep down in the rabbit hole of recovery, I don’t know how to fix this.
I think I was born with this primal nature. If I’d been left in the wild without any sense of shame, I probably would have opened myself to all creatures, rolling in the mud and rain, rutting and howling. Maybe the trauma wasn’t simply being sexualized too early, but not being given a choice in the opening of this force I couldn’t control, which brought not the love I craved, but a deeper alienation. From that time onward I was pulled into a double life, with the secret knowledge of adults vibrating inside me even as I was still playing with dolls. It was only a quick jump from
there to giving blow jobs on concrete steps before I hit age twelve. Choiceless not just in those first interactions, but choiceless from then on because my need meant that anyone could reach out and I would respond, despite the rumors that surrounded me and the word “slut” pinned to my overly developed middle school breasts. More than the sex, it was disgrace that wounded me and trapped me in another repetitive compulsion: seeking redemption the only way I knew how, by offering my body even as I lost more of myself each time. And now I don’t even know how to say no to Taylor. When he wants me, I open to him. Sometimes it’s a needy child he enters in the darkness, and sometimes it’s a woman. And sometimes I roll him over and pin him down, taking whatever I can from him before my body rebels and I’m left alone within the embrace.
18
Exposure
Ethan and I begin to explore this new terrain of my sexuality just as my final cycle of DBT skills group comes to a close. I’m about to graduate from the group and enter life after DBT, a place thousands of us transition into without much understanding of what comes next. So what does comes next? In my case, I’m lucky. My program has a graduate group run by a trauma specialist. As I’ve mentioned, in Linehan’s model (1993a), resolution of trauma is key to moving though stage two, and while I still resist seeing myself as a victim of trauma, it’s becoming clear that I have some lingering unresolved issues, despite my decades of therapy.
In DBT, stage two is mainly concerned with exposure-based procedures for working with trauma and difficult emotional experiences. Linehan recommends that this kind of therapy not be done in a DBT skills group. In fact, she suggests that therapists stay away from discussions of past events until stage one, learning the DBT skills and decreasing self-harm, has been achieved. This ensures that the person has a toolbox ready for dealing with the difficult issues that come up in stage two. Stage two isn’t formal in the way the skills group has been. I don’t get a worksheet to fill out that says now you’re going to have sex with Taylor and work on exposing yourself to difficult emotions and traumatic experiences. Acclimating to seemingly overwhelming feelings and developing tolerance is an incremental experience. There are many techniques presented in Linehan’s textbook related to this next stage, all of them based on behavioral theory: exposure to triggers, blocking the tendency to react in typical ways, choosing which behaviors to reinforce (and which to not reinforce), and role-playing. And just as the dance between acceptance and change plays out in life and therapy, both exposure to and protection from these emotions need to be managed dialectically. I am not yet so good at this.
A few weeks before I’m to leave the skills group, I meet with Olivia, the graduate group leader, and Simon to review my progress and get oriented to the new group. I’m completely committed to entering this new group, but I have to ask whether there’s any chance the previous group can continue as a peer support group for DBT skills. The skills group is as close to a recovery community as I’ve gotten, even though it doesn’t have a BPD emphasis. I want to keep sharing my recovery with them, and I want to keep seeing their progress. Darcy is blossoming. She broke up with her boyfriend and has a place of her own—and a new haircut that shows off her beautiful eyes. Misha is getting over her ex and finally starting to date other women. Jenny (and her guide dog) has started attending graduate classes in psychology. Like a pied piper, Simon has led us from one skill to another, and we’ve been traipsing after him as best we can—sometimes stumbling, but also skipping, racing, and even dancing. Sharing in the group amplifies every concept by the power of our individual experiences and feeds us with new options. Robyn practices the distraction technique by building sculptures from found objects. Maria visits her in-laws knowing that she’ll be sucked into their drama, and yet able to practice radical acceptance. Goth Chick has switched from punching walls to kickboxing. We share our lists of pleasant events and witness each other identifying emotions. We even survive a cat fight between Maria and Goth Chick. As the fight-or-flight response passes through us like electricity, we all begin to hyperventilate; Simon makes us sit and breathe until the intensity begins to ease. This group meets only ninety minutes each week, so it certainly isn’t the center of my life, but it has become part of my foundation. And I need to keep a foundation. I don’t want to lose everything just because I’m doing better.
Simon and Olivia shake their heads sadly when I ask whether the group can continue meeting as a peer group after we graduate. They say it’s impossible: no resources, no time, and possibly boundary violations and conflicts of interest. I feel upset that they don’t understand the significance of this loss, and I even secretly petition the other women in the group to come find me after they’ve graduated so that we can meet in secret. I imagine us gathering in someone’s living room. “Did you do the distress tolerance exercise?” “Shh, I think there’s someone at the door…”
In order to prepare for the upcoming transition, I need to look for other supports. I’ve joined an online DBT Listserv. That helps, since it allows me to communicate electronically with others about the skills, but it doesn’t substitute for real people. There’s a depression and bipolar support alliance at another local hospital, but I don’t feel safe disclosing my BPD diagnosis there, or anywhere at this point, unless I have some assurance I won’t be dismissed and judged. In New York City, a personality disorder association gives workshops about BPD for family members, and the National Education Alliance for BPD has recently developed a similar program, but again it’s only for family and friends of those with BPD. The one place I keep circling back to is a local personality disorder organization that meets at my old hospital. While it too is set up to help non-borderlines, they say they welcome everyone to their workshops, regardless of status. After reading so many online tirades, I’m more than a little worried about the reaction I might get if I show up at one of their events, but on the other hand, this organization offers family workshops featuring famous doctors and training in DBT skills. It’s as close as I’m going to get to a BPD community that doesn’t include a computer screen and people threatening to jump off bridges.
So one Saturday afternoon I suck it up and finally go. The meeting, held in a room off the cafeteria where my parents and I met during that summer of last resort, is attended mainly by haggard-looking parents and fretful spouses. I spot maybe one or two other borderlines in the room. How do I know they’re borderlines? They position themselves as I do, hunkered down, not making eye contact, already appearing defensive as the conversation will, inevitably, be about “us.” It’s a bizarre scenario, actually. What if there were no support groups for people with cancer, but only for their families? And what happens when cancer patients actually sneak into in the room, like spies, to hear themselves being discussed? Imagine if none of those cancer patients talked to each other, and they didn’t even know how people might recover from cancer; instead, they just sit silently in the corners, feeling their disease eating them alive. That’s exactly how I start feeling.
The room is small and there’s no airflow. A mother is talking about how her borderline daughter just yells at her all the time. A husband can’t get his wife into treatment. A father explains that his son needs treatment, but no one will give it to him because of the common misconception that only females have BPD. My anxiety reaches a critical level, so I flee to the bathroom. First I splash cold water on my face, then I sit on a toilet and self-soothe by pressing my palms against my face and on my neck, patting my arms, and massaging my chest. These physical interventions help a lot.
I go back into the room and discover that the other two borderlines have left. I know Ethan would ask, “Why do you need to be in this group if it’s so upsetting?” Why? Because this is the only place I know of where people even dare to utter the word “borderline,” and I’m desperate for a community where I don’t have to feel like I’m always hiding, and where I might even be understood. I’m quite desperate for it. That could be viewed as a problem—a pathological need for attenti
on, which is often considered another BPD trait—or it could be seen as simply human nature. Perhaps it lies on the borderline of both—yet another dialectic, along with the issue of exposure versus protection. For those of us with BPD, entering into a shared experience means passing through the ring of fire that leaves us feeling even more burned—and in this case branded with a label no one would ever choose to wear.
I’m royally triggered by the meeting, but I go back the next month to another packed room, and listen. This time an occupational therapist discusses job difficulties for people with BPD. I linger for a bit afterward and nervously allow myself to be greeted by the organizers. When asked by Allison, a stately, blond woman with kind eyes, why I’m attending the support group, I say, “I have BPD.” Such a simple statement, really, but it feels like I’m disgorging a giant rock from my mouth. Allison smiles when I tell her. Smiles!? I’ve never gotten this reaction before. Anything she might say after that smile will pale in comparison, because this is truly the first time that admitting to having BPD hasn’t caused bafflement, denouncement, worry, or fear. Even with Taylor, who has been so understanding and supportive, it always feels like I’m describing the creature from the black lagoon. He’s fascinated, and also unperturbed—unless I start throwing too much muck at him. But this is the first time I’ve gotten a smile and a hug.
“My daughter has it too,” Allison says, embracing me. “Bless your heart for coming. I’m sure it can’t be easy.” I look down and realize I’ve got five giant cookies from the refreshment table on my paper plate. Distress tolerance skill 3.4: carb overdose. I thank her and she brings me over to Don, a tall man in a suit whose grown daughter has BPD. And then to Janine and Reggie, a married couple and parents of a son with BPD.
Buddha and the Borderline Page 17