It’s obvious to me that this turmoil is drawing out my previous BPD symptoms. Like boils, they grow larger and more painful despite my years of therapy and training and what I’ve learned from Buddhism. It’s all returning: the black-and-white thinking, an acute, consuming emptiness that makes being alone unbearable, and the desperate sex to avoid abandonment (that’s my newest addition to the BPD criteria.). Five minutes after I walk into my new apartment, I feel like I’m trapped in a tomb, a lifeless place that centers around my bed, where I spend an inordinate amount of time crying or watching DVDs. It’s the echo of so many other rooms where I’ve been forced to return to myself, only to discover that it’s an impossibly painful destination.
When I cry in bed, I take to surrounding myself with all of my stuffed animals, as I discover the surges of pain pass more quickly when I do this. I’ve always had stuffed animals, but only now have I started talking to them. I look into the glass eyes in their plush faces and ask them to tell me I’m going to be okay. Moe the lion says, “You’re going to get through this, Kiera.” Luke the dog bobs his head in agreement and presses his face into my neck. Leon the bear says, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.” Yes, I am a thirty-five-year-old woman, and yet I can only find comfort in having imaginary conversations with stuffed animals. That, and swaddling. I buy numerous plush blankets, and when I can’t stop crying and the urge to cut feels overwhelming, I wrap myself inside them, naked, with only a small hole for me to breathe through. I lie there enclosed in softness, focusing on my breath and the sense of being held. Over and over, I repeat, “I accept this pain. I believe it will pass.” Sometimes that gets me through.
If not, then I page Ethan. Just hearing his voice can bring me partway back from the brink. At some point, his phone coaching shifted from focusing on DBT skills to working with my parts. He’ll ask if there’s a part of myself that needs to be acknowledged. At first I don’t know, then I grow fairly sure it’s the little dark one—an exile who has surfaced in a big way now that I’m alone. She’s a bit like Cousin Itt from The Addams Family: covered with hair, feral, only on the cusp of language. She is the part that creates that ache in my left palm and bangs her head against walls. Of all my parts, she is the most desperate for comfort and connection, and she’s also the most angry and fearful. So she’s usually locked up, because when she emerges her pain overshadows everything else.
“What can you do to take care of the little dark one?” Ethan asks. I tell him I’ve been talking to my stuffed animals and even swaddling, but I’m still a mess. He suggests that I reassure this part directly and also ask her what she needs, rather than assuming. He reminds me that self-soothing doesn’t necessarily allow my activated parts to have a voice, which is very important.
So I go back to my bed, and this time I try to maintain some distance from the pain, looking at it as this part of me and not the whole. I imagine the small space where the little dark one is usually curled up, hair wild, rocking back and forth. She won’t say anything, so I tell her that I’m going to take care of her. I promise her that. She remains silent. I ask if she can come out a bit and tell me what she needs. Again, I say that I’ll do my best to give her what she needs. At first, she remains silent. Then (and this always freaks me out), I feel a small movement inside me and she speaks, in a whisper: “Juice.”
“Juice?” I ask. There’s a little nod in the darkness inside myself. I realize that she’s thirsty. Is it me that’s thirsty, or just this part? There must be more to this; she isn’t crying because she’s just thirsty. But maybe this is her way of testing whether I’m actually going to give her something she needs. So I go to the fridge and pour a glass of apple cider. It tastes like the fields behind my mother’s house on autumn nights, punctuated with cold stars and warm scarves. The juice is so simple, the sweet liquid of childhood that returns every year carrying the orchards and sunsets. By the time I’ve finished the cider, my tears are gone. And I’m totally spooked, once again, that I have these parts and they actually communicate with me.
It’s so hard not to perceive myself as totally relapsing. Though I’m not acting on the urges to hurt myself, my shopping habit is more impulsive that ever. One day I drive to the Burlington Mall to buy bras at Sears, and I end up charging a leather massage chair. My credit card statements show I’ve spent more in the past few months than I have in the previous ten years combined. Also, I have no patience or tolerance for minor aggravations, and my anger level surges at the smallest sense of invasion. I’m back to wanting to kick people who step in my way on the sidewalk and wanting to take an ax to the copy machine when it malfunctions. I want to do drastic things just to shift my focus away from the empty hell I’m returning to.
“It really feels like I’m back to square one,” I tell Ethan. “How can I have done so much work and still get this messed up again?”
Ethan asks, “Do you think it’s abnormal to feel alone and in pain when you’re in the midst of a breakup?”
I say, “No, it’s not abnormal… But it is bringing out all of my BPD symptoms.”
“It might be just as valid to say that BPD symptoms come out temporarily in anyone who is in extreme pain or who’s going through a terrible loss.”
I hadn’t thought about it that way, but it makes sense. Breakups devastate most people; maybe there would be something wrong with you if they didn’t. And a lot of people lose their shit even more than I am right now. But what most of them don’t have is twenty years of illness just waiting to be reactivated.
Ethan does his Socratic reality check, asking me if I’m really back at square one—back when we first met. He says, “I know it feels that way, but can you see any differences between then and now?”
Damn you, Ethan… He’s right. All of my ducks are in a row: My bills are paid, I’m still going to work, I’m not harming myself (other than with my credit card habit), and I’m not alone. I have genuinely supportive relationships, especially with Gail. She midwifes me through my workdays. When she sees me sitting at my desk in tears, she gives me a hug. She sends me out of the office for walks and periodic airings and listens to my insane flip-flopping over Taylor without telling me what I should do. Over and over, she says, “You’ll do what you know in your heart is right.”
When I walk into work, there’s a sense of coming home. I’ve never worked in one place for so long. Nor have I had such an enduring connection with a group of people that didn’t involve sex or sitting in a circle in some support or therapy group. Being at my desk is the closest I can come to “sitting on the cushion” as a daily practice—and as a way of abiding myself. It’s not meditation, but it’s something. Each time I sit down, I must be with myself to a certain extent. Even with the distractions of the Internet and advocacy work, I have the space to be mindful, to observe myself from time to time. I’m not free-falling. I have to tell myself this repeatedly, as I make more maps of what I have in my life and who I’m connected to. Looking over them, I can see I’m not alone. My mother and father call me regularly. Even Taylor’s mom checks in with me every couple of weeks. And Raymond takes me out to dinner on a regular basis, and despite my vegetarian aspirations, I still can’t resist those fine cuts of meat.
One of my few pleasures these days is shopping at Whole Foods Market. Now that Taylor and I aren’t trying to merge our diametrically opposed eating habits, I’m back to vegetables, grains, and organic fare, which I know will keep me healthy and help me get my weight back under control. When I was plagued by anxiety attacks, trips to Whole Foods were torture. Now, I can take some pleasure in lingering in the body care aisle and watching kids harass their parents for fruit roll-ups. One day as I’m eating sushi in the back dining area, I see a tall, thin figure standing at a checkout stand. I don’t recognize him immediately because he’s facing the register, but the familiarity of his gestures makes me think it’s Bennet. I get up to take a closer look and, oh my god, it is! He sees me too, and comes over with his bag of groceries.
“What are you doing here?” I ask. It’s like he’s jumped universes. He’s supposed to be in a different world, or at least a different town. Yet here he is, over four years later, looking exactly the same, down to the bright white sneakers and pointy sideburns. He says he’s doing a carpentry job nearby, so he stopped in for some stuff for dinner.
We stand looking at each other for a moment.
“Listen…,” I say, getting ready to apologize for being such a maniac in our relationship.
“No, it’s okay,” Bennet shakes his head. “We were both going through a rough time.”
“I was really at my worst. You know you saved my life when you told me to go get more help.”
Bennet smiles and says he’s glad. He only wanted for me to be happy. I ask about Alexis—are they still living together?
“No, she moved out. Now she’s involved with a group of Buddhists.”
“Buddhists?” I echo. “What kind?”
“I think they’re from Tibet. She’s really heavy into it.”
I tell him that’s amazing, that I’ve become involved in Tibetan Buddhism too. (But I don’t mention that I’ve kind of fallen off the enlightenment wagon.) Bennet digs around in his jacket pockets and writes Alexis’s email address and phone number on an old receipt. Then we stand awkwardly. There’s nothing more to say. It’s obvious we’re just crossing paths, so we hug and say good-bye.
Alexis. That name again. Her voice. Her heavy-lidded eyes. I’m ambivalent about contacting her, in part because I’m worried that she’ll be more Buddhist than me. Not only have I stopped emailing Rinpoche and reciting my prayers, I’m still living the life I declared I wanted to be rid of. I’m still spending half of my nights at Taylor’s house watching TV, eating meat, and having sex with him. Taylor asks, “How can I take your complaints seriously when the things you tell me upset you about our relationship are the very things you also want to do with me?”
I have no answer. I am so obviously fucked-up here that I can only say, “You’re right. What do you want for dinner?”
It’s early spring when I finally contact Alexis. I send her an email with a quick hello. She writes right away, excited to be in touch and eager to get together. She’s still living in Lowell but spends most of her time with her Sangha in Somerville. We’re amazed to discover that, although our routes were entirely different, we’ve ended up taking refuge in almost exactly the same type of Buddhism. The lineage of her Sangha and Rinpoche’s share many of the same teachers and practices. However, her teacher and community are very close by, and they meet weekly.
I email and ask, “You have your own Tibetan monk right at home?” I’m so jealous. She tells me I should come to one of their practices, and I promise that I will. In the meantime, we get together for coffee. Although it’s been many years since I’ve seen her, Alexis is the same: beautiful, strong, opinionated, quirky—and now a Buddhist. More than that, she’s a practicing Buddhist. Going far beyond my meager efforts, not only did she take refuge, for the past three years she’s been learning Tibetan, going on retreats, studying the texts, and meditating. And she has a Sangha for support in all of this.
She wants to know what I’ve been doing for the past five years.
“Remember how I was diagnosed with BPD while Bennet and I were dating?”
She has a vague memory of it.
“I got pretty sick after we broke up and landed in the hospital again. I don’t know how much you knew, but I really thought you were destroying my life at one point.”
“Really?! Little old me?”
“Well, more you with Bennet.”
“Oh my god, it was so time to have my own life,” she says.
I agree. Now that Bennet isn’t in the picture, Alexis absolutely delights me. We spend hours in Starbucks, catching up. She says I’m lucky I didn’t get married, because if I were a typical wife with children, I’d have no time to practice the Dharma. My god, she is hard core!
I admit that in spite of breaking off the engagement, I haven’t let go of Taylor.
“You have to,” she declares, with that same certainty as when she told me to apply for disability, and to never be ashamed of having a mental illness. She reiterates that I should come to her Sangha sometime, and once again I again promise I will. But every week when the time comes, I find an excuse not to drive to Somerville.
I’m not sure how long this indeterminate state with Taylor can last. He tells me he’s dating other people, and I accept it begrudgingly. How can I make any claims on him when I can’t decide from day to day if I want to stay with him? Yet we continue to sleep together. Then, one day I realize my period is late. I call Taylor three times, hoping he’ll come to the store with me to get the test, but I don’t hear back from him. Finally I go to the store by myself. Back home, I take the test, discover it’s negative, and collapse in my bed. All day I had gone back and forth in my mind: Either we’ll keep the baby and get married, or I’ll get an abortion and turn my back on Taylor for good. Every five minutes it was a different answer.
I’m sweaty with all of the emotional reversals, and with anger at not having my calls returned. When I finally reach him late that evening, I discover that he’s been home all day working on a motorcycle and didn’t feel like answering the phone. I screech at him, “How could you avoid my calls all day?! I thought I was pregnant!”
“Well, you never said on your message it was an emergency.”
I shriek that this must be the lamest excuse ever and start crying. Taylor drives over immediately. We sit on the couch and he holds me while I lament the entire situation. It’s impossible to fix and impossible to let go of, but today we crossed a line. I can’t keep doing this, to myself or him. I finally say, “This has to be over. Really. It’s really, really over.”
Taylor nods. “I figured this would eventually happen.” We sit in silence for a while. When he gets up to leave, I have to hold myself back from pulling him down to the couch and kissing him. I’m such a mindfuck. I have to let him walk out the door. He has to stop letting me pull him back in. “I’m sorry,” I say as he gets his coat. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He leaves and I’m back to being alone in my little brick box. I make a cup of Sleepytime tea with milk and honey and cry to my stuffed animals—and sign up on Match.com.
25
Bad Buddhist
Sure, if I were Alexis, I probably would have headed straight to the Sangha and told them to chain me to the shrine room, force-feed me meditation practices, and do whatever it took to get me back to a place of balance and stability. But who wants that when you can log on to a dating site and start the insanity all over again?
It’s been three years since I’ve even looked at the online dating scene, and some things have changed. The pictures, for instance: In the old days, one or two headshots sufficed. Now everyone is a documented adventurer or world traveler, crossing the finish line of a triathlon, planting a national flag on a mountain peak, or shaking hands with movie stars. The profile presentation has evolved into an art form. There are blogs where you can record your dating experiences, places to upload videos, keywords to help compatible people find you. The personal essays are as sophisticated and polished as something you’d write for grad school.
And on my first search for potential partners, after typing in specs like age and location, who do I find but Taylor, along with his picture and his words. I’m mortified. The idea of both of us returning to the source of our relationship and fishing for someone new really pains me. Taylor’s profile also troubles me because it’s almost the same, almost word for word, as what I read three years ago. It’s incredible, actually, because it remains true; everything he says is still the same—what he likes, who he is, what he’s doing. I, on the other hand, have changed a lot, and what I end up writing for my profile is nothing like my first. I describe myself this time as a mental health advocate and educator, a motorcycle rider, a Buddhist, and a writer. Once again, even our online profi
les reflect the divide between our natures: his deep stasis, my mercurial change.
My urge to quickly meet someone who might distract me from going back to Taylor prompts me to post pictures that are more provocative than before. I have a photo of me in racing leathers on the motorcycle, another of me wearing thigh-high boots and a corset, a third showing me in profile at sunset, and a fourth where I’m sitting in front of my Buddhist shrine. How’s that for eclectic? I’m also more explicit in what I write. I emphasize my sensual nature, my love of touch, my “adventurousness.” All in all, this newly packaged Kiera looks quite good, and the response is immediate. Hari, a handsome Indian man who rides a motorcycle, owns his own business, and is my age tells me I’m beautiful and intriguing. Like a snort of coke, his email hits my pleasure center and I’m happier than I’ve been in months. Two days later, I’m out on a date with him, and he’s a spectacular man: well-built, freshly showered and shaved, dressed in that way that certain European men have—tailored yet also somehow rugby ready. He picks me up in a BMW and we go to a local Thai restaurant with golden Buddha statues, sequined elephants, bamboo plants, and framed pictures of dancing women. He takes my hand as soon as we’re sipping our mango lassis and says I’m perfect. I demur and remind him that he hardly knows me. Ahh, but he can tell these things. He says he sees that I am kind and compassionate, creative and adventurous.
Buddha and the Borderline Page 24
