Life on the Borderline

I used to think of my life as tragi-comic and left it at that. I didn't give much thought to why I acted the way I did, or why things were so difficult. Going from one misadventure to the next just seemed inevitable. But in the last few years, I've become keenly aware of my propensities to getting attached, getting problematically attached, becoming fixated, worrying that I'll end up on the Dangerously Fixated Persons list (yes, it does exist, and for good reason), and convincing myself that people are available when they aren't.

Here are a few of the things I've done -

I became overly focussed on a female professor, and then broke down when rebuffed. I'm sure that what I like to call my 'homosexual anxieties' played a part in my collapse. Nowadays I regard myself as a failed lesbian, and this probably is genuinely tragi-comic.

I had a seventeen year 'arrangement' with a bloke who was only intermittently nice to me. My father wisely commented that this was a case of 'come hither so I can keep you at arm's length', and that whatever nice things this man said, he only meant it for the moment. I became pregnant, checked that the father didn't want the baby (no way, he said, as if I had mortally wounded him), and then dragged myself to an abortion clinic in Streatham. Just before I went in, I spotted a crow pecking at a dead squirrel. It seemed like a sign to turn and flee, and sometimes I wish I had.

I then vigorously pursued a handsome singing teacher who had a bad foot. We had a brief affair, and then devastation ensued when the curtain inevitably fell.

Also worth mentioning is my letter to an academic specialising in attachment asking if she would take me into therapy. She wouldn't, but this fact was only established by talking to her in person, and by then it was too late. The limpet had landed. I swear the colour of the sky changed that day she told me nothing was possible.

 'I know it feels like the start of something' she said.
'Yes,' I muttered back, in dull misery. ‘I understand, it is the beginning of the end.'
My mother (who listened more than once to the whole sorry saga) said,
'You sound like you're talking about the end of a love affair.'

 And it did feel like that. This academic spoke as if she was on day release from a Henry James novel, and that was enough to draw me in.

I thought things were looking up when I found a Kleinian analyst to talk to. But, less than a year into our difficult sessions, she told me that she was seriously ill and would need to stop work immediately for treatment. At that point, my typical belligerence left me, and I burst into tears. I must have cried a tear or two every might for at least a year. It felt like some sort of religious offering to my pillow. This analyst lived fifteen minutes away from me, and yet seeing her was impossible. She was the wisest practitioner I've ever met, and I never really knew where that came from. She told me that her own analyst had died 'from one session to the next', and that as a patient, I would feel 'like family'. These were helpful things to say, and she died a few years later. Nevertheless, I took far too long to recover from this shock, and now I see it as another case of over-attachment.

The Backstory to Borderline Misadventures

 Most people who have borderline characteristics have had what are called adverse experiences in childhood. They've experienced neglect, or sexual abuse (it's estimated that over seventy per cent of women with BPD have been sexually abused). An invalidating environment also plays a key part. And these were all features of my childhood. I've never wanted to be defined by them, and I used to think that, with enough grappling, the negatives of the past wouldn’t dominate. But they have.

It may seem as if I'm getting bogged down in working out how the past has affected the present. Well, that's exactly what I'm doing. It's an excavation. The body is being exhumed. The team from Silent Witness is on standby. I want to understand!