My life began to fall apart problematically about two years ago. I was married with two small children (spoiler alert: I still am). We all lived in a cramped flat in New York, and I was somewhere in my career when I believed things should be getting better, but they weren’t. Everyone else had a Subaru and a house in upstate New York. What had I gotten myself into? My connections had always been rough, but as my cohort grew older and began to have children of their own, I discovered that I had fewer and fewer close friends on whom I could rely. My marriage was always tumultuous, but recently it was tumultuous all day. Meanwhile, my emotions were out of control. I got torn between squid-ink wrath and existential squid-ink darkness.
My entire life has got spent with me only. That misery was me, no matter how wretched I was, if that makes sense. As a result, I did not seek expert assistance. Who would I be if this constricted mass of muck that was me was destroyed, I worried? I was terrified of what counseling may disclose, of letting go of the coast and drifting into deep water, and of having to put my feelings into words.
I’m fairly convinced I would never have gone to counseling if I hadn’t had children. But, amid what I assumed to be a mental breakdown—what I later understood to be an episode of emotional dysregulation—I attempted suicide. It was a difficult situation. Achilles, our five-year-old son, spoke to me through the door to our bedroom. He had no idea what was going on, only that something wasn’t right. And because it’s too sad to explain to a five-year-old you love that what you’re doing in the bedroom is dangling from the closet rod with a leather belt around your neck (which is also difficult to describe with a said belt around your neck), I eventually emerged and lived. Seeking aid was a life or death situation for me at the time.
Even then, I hesitated because I was afraid. But what terrified me more than going to counseling was the prospect of not going. The evidence that I was suffering from mental illness was unmistakable, as was the fact that it was impacting the people I cared about. Because I have children and adore them, I felt I needed to get assistance, not so much for myself as for them. I’m too twisted up to be happy right now. My children need happiness and a father who can freely love and be loved. The idea of passing on my unresolved issues—or, more accurately, the contortions that formed like calluses around those issues—made me sick to my stomach.
As a result, I wound up in counseling with Julia, a lovely lady. There were people just like me chatting to people just like her all around me, in that office space and adjacent buildings. Looking at her ready-to-pluck tissues and well-hugged crushed-velvet pillow, I thought to myself, “How cliché.” Week by week, though, it felt great to be able to talk to someone who wasn’t angry with me for a decade of insanity, who could see me with compassion and professional compunction. What difference does it make if I pay her $200 an hour?
After a while, Julia indicated I might have a borderline personality disorder, a set of symptoms that includes suicide ideation and attempts, excessive wrath, impulsive conduct, and black-and-white thinking, all of which I had labeled as my own in the coat check of ego. That character I wore and referred to as “myself”; that guy who pounded walls and burst into rages; that guy who tumble-dried in the shape cycles: who was he? I’m not one of them. Not at all. I discovered that I could let go of that image of myself. The more I learned about BPD, the clearer it seemed to me what caused what and why. I’m not denying that I’m to blame for the anguish I’ve caused others. I am who I am. But I didn’t have to be as hard on myself as I had been.
Unfortunately, there is no medical treatment for BPD, no prescription that will make you stop being a crazy guy. BPD will be my continuous companion because part of the condition is biochemical my mind is hard-wired to believe those I love the most are continually attacking me. Because it’s genetic, it’s also possible that it’ll get passed down to my sons.
My marriage was not saved by counseling. Counseling will not allow me to travel back in time to relieve my children’s terror or forward in time to alleviate their suffering. But what it did, and why I am still thankful for the past three years of my life, was allow me to understand myself. It’s as if I hadn’t fully sunk my teeth into this planet. Like a fearful marionette, I was separating parts of myself and suspending them. I’ve arrived. I’m pleased in ways I’ve never been before, and sad in ways I’ve never been before. I’m softer where I used to be hard, and looser where I used to be tight. What’s more, you know what? I feel more at ease confessing, “I’m afraid,” I say, but I’m still going to sit on a couch and get to know myself better.