Buddha and the Borderline

by Kiera Van Gelder

  “Just stick out your finger and she’ll climb onto it,” Bennet advises more than once. Every time I try, Bancha sinks her beak into my finger, like a fishing hook catching a fat worm.

  “Ooh, just look at how feisty she is,” Bennet croons as I’m being skewered. I don’t know what threatens me more—Alexis the Ex or Bancha the Bird. When I witness the three of them bonding in the kitchen, I want to throw knives. Instead, I let Bancha bite me, over and over. It takes the edge off the whole situation.

  In my life, relationships are like rubber bands. They stretch and snap back so many times, but eventually something breaks and there’s no way to repair the damage. I know that to keep Bennet, I have to control myself—not let my insecurity and pain stretch us too far. I really adore Bennet: his tenderness, his hardness. I stare at him with the doped eyes of desire and make him pull over on the side of the highway so we can have sex before he drops me off at an NA friend’s house where I’m staying until I can find a job and a place of my own.

  Bennet doesn’t think it’s odd that I don’t have a place to live or a job. But to put things into perspective, we’re both recovering addicts, steeped in a world of 12-step meetings, living “one day at a time” away from the liquids, pills, and powders that nearly killed us. Perks like homes and jobs, much less 401(k) plans, aren’t the highest priority in our crowd. Staying alive is. This suits me fine, because despite being clean and sober for almost a decade, I’m still a mess. Something deeper than drugs, depression, or anxiety keeps destroying my life. By the time I meet Bennet, I’ve quit two teaching jobs, spent over six months in mental hospitals, been on a dozen medications, and seen even more therapists. I dropped out of high school, then out of college. I’m like a cat with nine lives: prep, punk, goth, hippie, hipster… My periodic breakdowns somehow coincide with shifts in musical taste, and they generally lead to more diagnoses: depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), alcoholism, and drug addiction.

  Right now I call myself a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. I attend meetings almost every day. In 12-step communities, you’re told that sanity comes from admitting that you’re powerless over your addiction. You share the story of your downfall and honestly admit your faults, and they say you’re only as sick as your secrets. And my dirty little secret? I am always on the verge of drowning, no matter how hard I work to keep myself afloat. And the only way I know to stay afloat—to survive—is to find a savior. Bennet, as it turns out, has a bit of a savior complex.

  But then there’s Alexis. I can barely say her name. Since I know how deeply insecure I am and what jealousy does to me, I must do my best to control it. From the start, Bennet insists that there’s nothing but a strong friendship between him and Alexis anymore, and I try to believe him, but what proof do I have? Jealousy is an emotion that entirely consumes me, leaving only cinders of regret and shame. All summer, I douse it with reason and avoid mentally feeding the flames, but when I take a job early in the fall that requires traveling five days a week as an addictions educator, the dam finally breaks. Each night after ­lecturing to classrooms about the perils of drugs and alcohol, I retreat to my hotel room and dial Bennet’s number, desperate to hear his voice. But of course, whenever I call, she’s home. I know this because, inevitably, I hear her.

  “Hey, Bennet,” she shouts from the living room as I’m trying to get my boyfriend fix. “Where’s my briefcase?”

  He sighs like a tired husband. “Where you left it.”

  “Yeah, but where?” Bennet always apologizes when she interjects and pulls him away, but it’s hardwired between them, this inevitable interchange. He can’t say no when she says his name. Even if she’s silent while Bennet and I talk, I envision the two of them all cozy at home together: having dinner, playing with Bancha. These images propel me into a ball on the bed, curled around my useless suffering and heaving with sobs. I believe Bennet is more devoted to Alexis than he is to me, and no amount of reasoning makes this go away.

  Although Bennet does try reasoning with me, this only leads to fights. I’m the very image of self-possession at work, whether lecturing to an auditorium or running a workshop, but as soon as Bennet and I get on the phone or I drive over to see him, the smallest things trigger me: a glance between him and Alexis, the mention of a shared supermarket errand. I swallow my anger, but as soon as we we’re alone with the door closed, it rises up in my throat like a burning coal I have to spit out. The words, once let loose, travel furiously: “You fucking bastard, you don’t understand! You fucking bastard!” In an instant, I shift from a woman to a wild-haired girl kicking furniture to a balled-up weeping child on the bed, begging for a touch.

  “This isn’t about me and Alexis,” Bennet insists. “You don’t feel like you belong anywhere. You’d have the same kind of problem with me even if I lived alone.”

  When he says things like this, I get twisted up with confusion. My unshakable belief is that if he could prove he’s more committed to me than he is to Alexis, I’d finally be okay. But I also know that Bennet is right. I’ve never felt like I belong—anywhere. Ever since I was a young girl, I’ve shaped myself into personas and ideals designed to entice others to love me. Now it’s happening again with Bennet. I’ve ditched the fetish clothes and the nipple rings, painfully inserted a couple of months earlier at a tattoo parlor in New Hampshire, along with my tongue ring because he says they’re gross. Now I wear jeans and T-shirts and Bennet’s leather jacket. It feels like my life hangs in the balance of his affection—as though his heartbeat and skin, his voice and eyes, bring me back to myself. As though I don’t exist without him.

  The cycle, once started, is unstoppable. My jealousy and insecurity begin to devastate the relationship like a wrecking ball as I helplessly watch the slow-motion collapse of the building. The more upset I am, the more Bennet withdraws. And his retreat in the face of my desire spurs me to greater and greater levels of panic and fear. Yet the more I try to capture his attention, the less of him there is, so the cycle continues, with his absence propelling me back toward him with a force that borders on violence. We’ve been together only four months, and already he’s stopped caressing me. The sex is a cement that will not dry and set. Sometimes I feel genuine hate for him, even as my need for him consumes me.

  Late November is never a good time for me. My sense of being unmoored amplifies in the dark afternoons, and I long for bed no matter what hour of day it is. My job is grueling, with so much travel and public speaking every day. I’ve grown tired of telling my story about addiction over and over again. And my body is rebelling: tremors, profuse sweating, a racing heart, and a dry mouth every time I’m in front of a crowd—all signs that my “anxiety disorder” is full throttle. I call my doctor and he switches me to a newer antidepressant said to help with anxiety, but it’s no match against my biology. In fact, every day I feel like I’m getting worse. Then, one night a group of students harasses me during a workshop on the dangers of marijuana, and I burst into tears in front of fifty high school seniors. I drive back to Lowell bawling and suicidal and quit the job the next day.

  Three days later I’m still crying, and I’m also afraid to leave the house. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I tell Bennet. I know it was a horrible workshop, but something more is going on. I can feel it resurfacing, that thing at the core of me that I’m always trying to control. Given enough stress and heartache, it always comes back and breaks through my façade. I’m so good at beginnings, but in the end I always seem to destroy everything, including myself.

  “You should probably go to a meeting,” Bennet says. Instead, I retreat into his bed. For a week I don’t get out except to eat or use the bathroom. I curl up with the covers tucked under me on all sides while Bennet dresses for work. When he leaves, I feel relief. When Alexis leaves, I’m doubly relieved. But then I feel worse—achy with rage and helpless, but too exhausted to do anything about it. At the end of that week, I somehow drag myself to my therapy appointment. Anna, my
counselor, specializes in drug and alcohol addiction. I’ve been seeing her for almost three years. Although she’s saddened that I quit my job, she’s still optimistic that I can pull myself together; we simply need to put together a plan for me to get a new job.

  I disagree. How am I going to get a job when I can barely leave Bennet’s house? I haven’t even visited the room I recently rented for myself in Waltham, paid for with my first paycheck. At this juncture, I’d typically pack up my things and beg my mother to take me in until I could find another job or a hospitable boyfriend. But she’s out of the country, in Bali, on a yearlong sabbatical from her teaching job.

  Listening to my situation over dinner, Alexis declares, “You need to apply for psychiatric disability.”

  “Am I really that sick?”

  “Look at how much you’re suffering! This isn’t addiction you’re dealing with. This is mental illness. Think of it like being hit by a bus, and now you can’t walk.”

  Suddenly I understand why Bennet leaps to attention every time he hears her voice. Alexis is commanding and self-assured, and even though I’m sure she’s my mortal enemy, I follow her suggestion. Despite full-blown anxiety attacks, I make numerous trips to the Social Security office in Waltham and the public assistance office in Somerville, where the waiting rooms swim with foreign languages, the cries of babies, and the smell of stale cigarettes. The disability application process rivals any college application in both duration and complexity. Only here the goal is to gather testimony confirming my inability—inability to manage my life or be an adult like everyone else. I know the records will cause confusion, as my history isn’t charted in one continuous, major decline. In some ways, I am almost adultlike. Despite the many times I’ve dropped out of school, I always manage to return, and I finally got my degree. I used to drink and use drugs; now my addictions are “in remission.” And I certainly don’t appear disabled—maybe a little frazzled and like I’ve been crying for two weeks straight, but with some lipstick I clean up fairly well.

  To tide me over while my disability application is being processed, I’m issued a welfare benefits card. It gives me a set amount of food stamps, which aren’t stamps at all, but a debit system on my card, to be used only in grocery stores. The card also gives me access to a small amount of cash for covering rent and utilities, though the state of Massachusetts must have been using 1950s calculations, for who could pay for housing and the electric bill on three hundred dollars a month?

  As the days grow ever shorter and the air sharpens, I continue to stay with Bennet and Alexis despite the pain, and despite the option of going back to my rented room in Waltham. Being with them is a platonic ménage à trois where I’m both trapped and contained, a child desperate for love and also a scorned mistress. I’m unable to break free of a bond that, while upsetting, is also as close to a sense of belonging as I’ve had in a long time. To confuse matters, Alexis is steadily growing on me. Some evenings the two of us prepare dinner, like co-wives, confiding in each other and discussing delicate information, such as the admirable size of Bennet’s penis. We sip tea and revisit the times in our lives when both of us were desperate for drugs. Like Bennet, I’ve gotten into the habit of hugging her good night. I’ve missed the friendship of a woman. Also, I realize she’s quite hot.

  I know that something has to break, and shortly before Christmas, it does. I’m in Bennet’s room, and I can hear everything in the kitchen. I can hear Bennet and Alexis playing with Bancha and the stupid cooing voices they use with her, hear them discussing errands that need to be done, and then I hear their usual good night ritual—the hug they give each other while both say, in unison, “Good night. I love you.”

  But tonight there’s a pause and Alexis says, “Not on the lips.”

  Or maybe she says, “Nothing amiss,” or some other small phrase that only a depressed, emotionally strung-out, unemployed, wildly jealous girlfriend would misinterpret. Even though I know they’re not sexually involved, they’re bound together in so many other ways that I imagine it would be easy for Bennet to fall into treating Alexis like a lover. I imagine that he tried to kiss her good night as he might kiss me, and that image throws the “go crazy” switch inside me.

  “What did you just do with Alexis?” I hiss at Bennet as soon as he’s in the bedroom pulling off his shirt. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, we say good night to each other every night. It’s not a big deal.”

  “But what kind of good night kiss? Full on the lips? Cheek? A peck?”

  “She’s like my sister! I’m not going to talk about this.”

  Bennet climbs into bed and I turn toward the wall and sob into the pillow. I fantasize about letting Bancha out into the cold December air, preferably when Bennet is home so he can see the bird pass by the kitchen window and flutter off into the winter sky. I also fantasize about my death. The image of Bennet finding me on his bed, dead from an overdose, flashes through my mind more and more often, especially when I’m in the shower. There, under the hot water, I’m confronted by my body, a pale, hairy thing that feels rubbery and unreal half the time. I can so easily imagine it sprawled out lifeless and rigid, with a note that says, “See what you’ve done to me?”

  I haven’t hinted to Bennet about the suicide fantasies, but the next morning it’s as if they crept into his dreams. Bennet takes my hand and says, “I think you should see another doctor.” I look away, tears welling up. Half of me still believes that if only he’d move out, away from Alexis, the situation wouldn’t be so bad. Bennet still has the chance to make it all better! He strokes my back and pushes the hair out of my eyes.

  “You’re a mentally ill, suicidal drug addict, like the rest of us. There’s no shame in that. You just need more help.”

  I remember how he’d first used that phrase, “mentally ill, suicidal drug addict,” at the NA dance. And how he’d said, “Of course we have problems. But I think we should give it a try.” We held each other so comfortably, leaning against that tree on the grass island in the middle of the parking lot. In that hour I came to believe that his touch could contain me—that someone might join me and I wouldn’t destroy what we had.

  2

  Girl, Recycled

  I take Bennet’s advice and call for a consult at a local hospital—the same one my mother took me to after I ran away from home so many years ago. In a small interview room, I sit with Dr. B, an elegant and taciturn Indian man, handsome and compact, with an English accent and gentle eyes. The office is small and bare other than a lamp, two chairs, and a desk.

  “What brings you here?” he asks, adjusting his chair.

  At first I say it’s my boyfriend, but then I tell him the whole thing. I start at the trailhead of my first suicide attempt and try to describe this overwhelming pain I’ve had for as long as I can remember. I show him the scars on my arms, and I name all the diagnoses I’ve gotten: depression, anxiety, PTSD, and chemical dependency. I list the medications, therapies, 12-step programs, religions, and nutritional supplements I’ve tried. I describe my previous stay in this hospital when I was seventeen, put on a ward for the summer before I turned eighteen, and my other hospitalization in college, when I dropped out and went into AA and NA to get sober.

  “I’ve been seeing therapists for almost twenty years,” I say, crying. “I’ve quit every substance besides caffeine and sugar. I’ve taken every medication psychiatrists have given me. I don’t understand why I’m not getting better. Everything I touch seems to turn to shit… I’m back at that place where I don’t see the point of going on. I’m just going in circles, like circles of hell, where there’s no escape.”

  The doctor considers his notes for a minute, nods, and hands me the tissue box. “Do you think it’s this relationship that caused things to get so bad?”

  “Yes…and no… It’s like the last straw.”

  “Do you have any stable or enduring relationships?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “I’m lucky if I can hang on to a friendship longe
r than a year. Two years with a boyfriend is as much as I’ve done. And when it ends, my life falls apart.”

  He asks, “Do you have a hard time when you think someone is possibly leaving you or neglecting you?” I nod and feel the stab of pain that always happens when I think of Bennet. I admit that I’ve sent letters in blood when I’ve felt rejected, and that there have been times I’ve thrown fits and kitchenware when a close friend replaces me with a boyfriend. I don’t want to make him think I’m a complete nutcase, but I confess that I once believed a boyfriend was having an affair with another woman through telepathy, and that when the three of us got together they were conspiring psychically to meet up when I was gone.

  Dr. B scribbles away. “What about anger?”

  “I’m terrified of it.” He asks if I have problems expressing it. I do. But it’s not so much the expression that’s difficult as it is the experience of having it inside me so often and having to manage it. It’s like being a sword swallower, only I don’t have the throat for it. Eventually the anger comes out. And it’s usually scary—to others and to me.

  “How intense are your emotions, on a scale of one to ten?” he asks. I reply that they’re usually somewhere between an eight and a ten.

  “Are they fairly steady, or do the change rapidly?”

  “Rapidly. Insanely quickly. They exhaust me. They take me over…”

  “Do you cut and burn yourself regularly?”

  I explain that it depends. When I was a teenager, it was constant. Now it’s periodic, mainly after breakups.