The Psychiatrist's Chair
The first time I made it to the psychiatrist after being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder.
I'm not driving. It's not beyond me now to fling open the door and follow it's path. It doesn't even scare me much. You can share the devastation between you. The narcissist thought of the awaiting, eternal peace is utterly magnetic.
I stay.
I sit in front of you.
I don't remember much of what you say, but am acutely aware that I don't do eye contact. I want to look, but am deeply afraid of the naive cliché. That you'll 'read my mind'. I pick at some dried bean juice on my jeans.
I want this to be a game. To play at being Borderline. But my mind has beaten me. It inhabited the reality long before I could touch the controls. The boundaries between play and frightening truth aren't blurred. They never existed. Eroded before conception even. I am shamefully naked. Grasping at a reflection I invented. This scares me more than anything. My stunned body reviles the stark revelation:
I have no idea who I am.
I will the comfort of chaos, but the clarity of this discovery lies unapologetically brazen.
Alone in the house. My 'stupids' fall and stick to me. I bend under their weight - choking, suffocating. I offer a cry - but it dies. Rebounds and hurts me with its failed flight. Because it's all too close. I cannot hear apart from the hum of blanket failure. Wrapping itself close. Sticking itself to me. Smothering. Bothering. To keep me.
I surrender to the blade.
I stay.
I sit in front of you.
I don't remember much of what you say, but am acutely aware that I don't do eye contact. I want to look, but am deeply afraid of the naive cliché. That you'll 'read my mind'. I pick at some dried bean juice on my jeans.
I want this to be a game. To play at being Borderline. But my mind has beaten me. It inhabited the reality long before I could touch the controls. The boundaries between play and frightening truth aren't blurred. They never existed. Eroded before conception even. I am shamefully naked. Grasping at a reflection I invented. This scares me more than anything. My stunned body reviles the stark revelation:
I have no idea who I am.
I will the comfort of chaos, but the clarity of this discovery lies unapologetically brazen.
Alone in the house. My 'stupids' fall and stick to me. I bend under their weight - choking, suffocating. I offer a cry - but it dies. Rebounds and hurts me with its failed flight. Because it's all too close. I cannot hear apart from the hum of blanket failure. Wrapping itself close. Sticking itself to me. Smothering. Bothering. To keep me.
I surrender to the blade.
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