Buddha and the Borderline

by Kiera Van Gelder

  “Nice work,” he comments, looking at my bows. I worry that he’s joking, but he isn’t. Mass producing miniature bows, watering his plants, making a dinner reservation for visiting clients—all receive the warmest thanks and appreciation. That isn’t normal, and I realize this isn’t a normal office. A small crew of international economists and engineers leisurely arrives by midmorning, dressed in jeans and sweaters. The office kitchen brims with fresh fruit, nuts, candy, and handpicked tea. Richard takes everyone out for Indian food on slow Friday afternoons. And at least once a week, Renee makes strawberry smoothies for everyone. She puts them on a silver tray with bendy straws placed in every drink and delivers them to the offices. Now that I’m here, I get to carry the tray.

  The situation, and the menial tasks I engage in, make me think of my prep-school classmates, now working on Wall Street or as international diplomats, teaching Greek and poetry at Ivy League schools, living in nice homes, and raising children. Yet I’m lucky to be alive. This is a new feeling, and a precious one, where carrying a tray of smoothies for Renee is a triumph.

  Despite showing up at work every day looking nonchalant and self-confident, I’m terrified. Committing the smallest error can detonate an emotional bomb in me, and although Ethan tells me to page him, my hair-trigger reactions and sudden shutdowns can eclipse that option. One day early on I use the paper cutter to crop some fancy paper for the last batch of cards and end up with a mess of rectangles instead of squares. Richard’s assistant, Gail, waits for me to hand them over, and I’m dizzy with panic when I do. I’ve disfigured the last of the specially ordered fancy paper. There’s no way I can fix the situation. Trapped between admitting my mistake and wanting to blame the paper cutter, I do a fast drop-off on Gail’s desk and head toward the conference room where Renee is wielding the glue gun. I’m hoping she’s in immediate need of a white chocolate Frappuccino.

  “Kiera?” Gail calls out.

  I cringe. I’m not sure what’s worse—messing up, pretending I haven’t messed up, or being caught doing both. I return to Gail and she holds up my handiwork.

  “These aren’t exactly the right size,” she says. Gail is an elegant older woman, and a true old-school executive assistant in the sense that she takes care of everything, seemingly effortlessly, and has worked for Richard forever. A mother of three children and married to a lawyer, Gail knows how to handle people. But she hasn’t yet worked with a borderline—someone who can’t tolerate the least bit of criticism because it feels like being punched in the face. I stare at the paper in her hand and tears well up in my eyes. Then I feel anger. Why did they make me use such a crappy paper cutter? Why are these cards such a big deal? Do I critique her bows? Then I look away, ashamed. I’m getting paid more for a week’s work here than I’d get for a month of disability. And I’m here to make these cards.

  Gail sits in her chair, polished and patient, and watches me struggle with my reactions. This is a moment I’ve had with so many people: when they first witness my break from reasonable Kiera to emotional Kiera—the moment when the borderline takes over… But before I can react further, Gail sets the paper aside and pats my arm.

  “It’s okay,” she says gently. “I’ve had trouble with that paper cutter before. I’ll just trim them down a bit more. No need to worry.”

  It’s like Gail just defused a bomb. I almost cry with gratitude, but I’m still in complete emotion mind—and terrified. I go to the bathroom and splash my face with cold water. I stare in the mirror and whisper, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” Yet I imagine Gail pulling Renee aside later. They will powwow and then break it to Raymond that I’m not cut out for even the simplest tasks. In a preemptive maneuver, I call Raymond that night and tell him I really messed up.

  “What did you do?”

  “I cut the paper wrong.”

  Raymond pauses. “You cut the paper wrong, huh?”

  “Yes, and I haven’t even made it to the phone-answering stage.” As I hear myself talk, I realize how ridiculous I sound. Raymond assures me I won’t lose my new job. But I’m not so sure.

  In my next session with Ethan, he asks, “What skills did you use with Gail?”

  This is now a typical question: What skills did you use? Oftentimes I can only think of what skills I should have used, in retrospect. This week most of the days on my diary card are blank because I’m so exhausted from the bus rides and office work. We’re doing a behavioral analysis, a DBT practice that reminds me of the elaborate CBT worksheets from the summer—except that with a behavioral analysis, no detail is considered irrelevant. In analyzing my situation with Gail, it appears I’m more upset with myself than anything else, and I can’t recognize what I did well. After some prodding, Ethan gets me to admit that I did observe my feelings: I knew I felt anger, fear, dread… And I didn’t react in a way that made things worse. But still, that little inner hurricane wrecked the first seedlings of my confidence at this job. And that’s one of the things I really hate—hate!—about BPD: that such a small incident can topple my inner composure, causing me to feel so vulnerable and out of control.

  Ethan has become my reality check. For every claim I make, he asks another question. Was I really out of control? What I did I do after the incident? Well, I went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face, right? I calmed down. Then I sat in the stall and talked myself down from the impulse to run away. I realized that unlike at the bookstore, I’d have someone to answer to, with future steak dinners and crème brûlée hanging in the balance.

  “So you self-soothed and thought about the pros and cons of your behavior—both DBT skills.”

  “I guess… But why can’t I just react like everyone else?”

  “Why do you want to react like everyone else?”

  “I want to have normal reactions because the way I feel things is wrong.”

  “What’s wrong about it?”

  I can’t come up with a rational answer. All I know is that my feelings are intolerable, and to me, anything intolerable is wrong.

  Raymond is often downstairs in his third-floor office, and at odd times he pops up onto the fourth floor and checks in on me. It’s like having a secret doting uncle, and just seeing him coming up the stairs calms me down. “So you like it here?” he asks.

  I do. I want to sit at this desk behind the high marble counter, tend to the silver candy bowl, answer the phones, and send FedEx packages and sign for them. I want to work with Richard, Renee, and Gail in this quirky consulting office where people show up late and rollerblade at lunchtime and the VP makes everyone smoothies.

  “So all is good,” Raymond concludes. Umm, no. Actually, soon I’m going to be homeless. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. If I can keep this job, I can afford the rent increase, but living so far away and hiding from Patty is wearing me down. Just dragging myself out of bed before noon takes all I’ve got.

  “Why not get a place near Harvard Square?” Raymond asks. Right… That’s like suggesting I stay in the Ritz-Carlton. “There’s no way,” I tell Raymond.

  “There has to be a way,” he replies. “There is always a way.” He digs up the email for a private Listserv for traveling scholars, and I’m stunned to discover that within an hour of signing up, I have my pick of cheap local living options. Do I want to room with an Israeli physicist in a two-bedroom in Porter Square? A bioengineer with two cats in Central Square? Or, could this really be possible, a Harvard Square studio on the top floor of a historic Victorian, three blocks from work? I email the landlords and meet with them the next day. A married couple and longtime Harvard professors, they’re used to renting the studio to traveling scholars, not former mental patients, so I know I have to put on my game face and present myself as capable and self-sufficient. I tell them that I’m an artist, looking for a quiet place to work when I’m not at my day job—which is true. Remember the dialectic: Two seemingly opposite things can be true at the same time.

  The professors take me up two narrow sets of stairs, and w
e emerge into a square studio with windows on all sides—a veritable box of light, outfitted with a couch, a table, a kitchen nook, and a surprisingly large bathroom. The ceiling is low, enough so that the husband needs to stoop a little. But I clear it by a good four inches. It’s also completely furnished, which is good, since all I have is a futon.

  I say that I’ll take it, even though I don’t how I’ll come up with all the deposit money. Ethan coaches me on the phone before I call my parents to request financial help, but when I ask, neither will commit without knowing what the other is going to do. I turn to Raymond, who in exasperation offers to pay whatever my parents won’t, and in a week, the three of them have put together the money for my move.

  On an unusually warm January afternoon, my mother and I pack up my boxes in Waltham, load them in her station wagon, and drive to Harvard Square, where we carry them up the two narrow flights of stairs. She surprised me by offering to help with the move and has been full of exuberant optimism all day. Her ability to find promise in opportunity is unyielding, which either bolsters me or negates me, depending on the hour and my mood.

  “This is perfect for you,” she says, after we’ve unloaded all the boxes. We’re sitting on the daybed, which is too lumpy to be a bed but too high up to be a couch. “I wish I could be so lucky. You can go to lectures at Harvard and go out every night to see movies, and you can get a cappuccino without having to drive twenty miles. I’d give my eyeteeth for a place this close to the square.”

  Yes, I am lucky. And I agree, the place is perfect, though not for the same reasons. That night when I’m alone, I drag the futon over to the corner of the room for the best morning light. Piled along the walls are the usual boxes of journals, drawings, books, and clothes. I have one wooden box filled with my brother’s clothes, which I sometimes take out and put on: a Guatemalan shirt, army pants, a tie-dye. Sometimes I go through the box and wish I was the one who died ten years ago. Other times, wrapped in one of his shirts, I feel grateful to still be alive. Yes, I’m lucky to be here, but not because I’m so close to movie theaters and academic lectures. I’m not interested in being cultured; I want to learn about survival. Now I have a ring with two keys in my hand: one for the studio, the other for the office. Each opens a door to the chance of having a life worth living.

  13

  Leaving the Dysregulation Zone

  My first few evenings at the studio, I sit on the carpet surrounded by piles of books and empty cardboard boxes—just sit and stare at my things. My relief at being away from Patty and having my own space is colliding with an even sharper edge of isolation. This is so familiar: I run from the “oppressor” and discover that my own presence is just as oppressive. I stare out the windows at the bare tree branches and avoid filling out my diary card. A different kind of despair enters me. Is this stage two? Despite having more safety and a sense of purpose, the term “quiet desperation” certainly applies here.

  More then ever, I’m living a double life. Kiera the Borderline struggles from minute to minute to manage her inner demons. But then there’s the outer persona, Kiera the Receptionist: “Good morning! How can I help you?” Actually, there’s another part: I’m the official “artist in residence,” one in a series of struggling creative types hired for the receptionist position in a tradition Richard established long ago. Right now I’m more just struggling than artistic, but it gives me an identity that the others value outside of my ability to fix paper jams in the copier. And being a receptionist isn’t so bad—if I can get away from the conviction I must win the Nobel Prize or publish the great American novel. I try to stay mindful and focus on the concrete: watering plants, unloading the dishwasher, answering phones, getting coffee for Renee (which she keeps insisting on treating me to, as well). And I have one last role: I am the espresso machine whisperer. Despite an office filled with Ph.D. engineers, I appear to be the only one who can decipher the blinking lights, calibrate the grind, and make steam flow from its silver spout, probably because I’m the only one who’s bothered to read the manual.

  Through January and February, I go to work and I wait for the spot in the DBT group to open up. I continue to work with Ethan on my diary cards and on applying the skills moment to moment. Life develops a rhythm of sorts: work, Ethan, visits to the local gym. Nights and weekends remain the most excruciating. They form an empty canvas, and all of the submerged tensions, fears, and pain of the day splash onto it as soon as I stop moving and sit down alone. Without a computer or cable TV, I have so few distractions that some nights I find myself crawling over the carpet on my hands and knees, picking up the bits of rock and leaf my shoes have tracked in. Or I take out every piece of clothing, refold, and reorganize. Beneath me the professor couple murmurs and laughs, or the sound of the TV floats up the stairs. Each of them has a private study, and the husband’s displays a row of books he’s published. (I know this because they asked me to feed their giant orange tabby cat while they were away, so I explored a little.) As I pick the lint off the rug, I can practically hear them editing each other’s work in bed.

  Some days I don’t think I can make it through work. If two calls come in at the same time, I’m hyperventilating. If a visitor walks through the door while a fax is transmitting, I can’t focus my eyes. Anything that comes suddenly, intensely, or at the same time as something else undoes me in a second.

  “Go talk to Renee if you need help,” Raymond tells me. I’ve figured out at this point that Renee knows that I’m a special case. I never ask Raymond what he told Renee about me, but I suspect it involves my difficulty with stress and tendency to fall apart. One afternoon shortly before I need to leave for a session with Ethan, one of the engineers asks me to print out ten long documents and do fancy bindings—which will keep me from making my appointment with Ethan. It’s been a bad day; the small frustration of a jammed stapler has been pushing me into panic and tears. I’ve kept control, but I know I have to get to Ethan. If I see him, I might be able to exhale without exploding. So, in tears, I go to see Renee. I don’t want to fall apart on her, and I feel ashamed that I’m in such a state.

  “What’s the matter!?” Renee asks when she sees me so upset. I can’t stop crying, and I’m sure she thinks there’s been a death in the family.

  Finally I choke out, “Steve wants me to stay late and I can’t!”

  I expect Renee to roll her eyes or tell me I’m overreacting. Her brow is furrowed as she hands me a tissue box. “So tell Steve you can’t. If you have an appointment, you have to go.”

  I’m so surprised at her response that my tears stop. “How do I tell him that?” I don’t understand. I thought I wasn’t allowed to say no. I’m the receptionist.

  “You have a life. You have to tell people what you can and can’t do. Tell him that he has to give you more heads-up, that you can’t drop everything for him because he forgot something.” She smiles gently. Renee: smoothie maker, coffee provider, and now adjunct therapist. I can almost feel the simmering chemicals in my brain cooling off. I go back upstairs, hit the bathroom to splash cold water on my face (self-soothe, ground…) and then approach Steve. This is big moment for me. I don’t know how to do these things. I’m afraid of what will happen, and I’m trembling as I tell him that I can’t do the job.

  “Okay.” Steve smiles, looking up from his desk. “No problem. Sometime tomorrow then.”

  When I’m in session with Ethan, he asks what was so intolerable about the situation with Steve. I know I felt trapped and overwhelmed, and certain that Steve would get angry or criticize me if I didn’t do what he wanted. From that perspective, my whole life might have changed if I’d done the wrong thing. Maybe I’d get fired from the job, then I’d lose my studio and be right back where I started. That short interlude at work reminded me of standing behind the counter at the Harvard Coop: my emotions cresting, people demanding things of me, and feeling that I couldn’t escape. I don’t know what other options there are except to submit or flee. But this was different, Et
han reminds me. I saw other options and took another direction.

  Am I doing things differently, or is it this office and Renee, nurturing me in a way no job ever has? I suppose I could have freaked out on Steve and simply left. I did try something new by going to see Renee and asking for help, despite how ashamed I was. Perhaps the difference is that my skills and the environment are finally working together.

  At the end of February, the promised spot in the DBT skills group opens up. From the moment I join the group, I see that it’s dramatically different from my previous DBT group. No more freewheeling discussions or spending an entire session on one person’s homework. No more musical chairs or sidetracking into Hegelian dialectics. Simon, our group leader, is the antithesis of Molly. Whereas over the course of an hour Molly might pace the room, perch on a desk, and swivel to and fro in her office chair, Simon’s body laconically drapes over his chair and moves only with the tide of necessity: a turn of page, a gesture to one of our raised hands. The rhythm of our progress is similarly unhurried, but systematic. Each week we begin with a quick check-in: I’m fine, I’m not fine, I’m totally freaking out. It doesn’t matter where each of us is. Simon doesn’t put out our raging fires, which are many. As with my environment at work, the space he creates in group holds us in the room, despite our urges to flee. And sometimes people do get up and leave. I haven’t so far.