Table of Contents
DEDICATION
To Stacey
I love you like I love the sun.
YOU LOOK LIKE A PERFECT FIT
FOR A GIRL IN NEED OF A TOURNIQUET.
BUT CAN YOU SAVE ME....
AIMEE MANN, Save Me
A BORDERLINE SUFFERS A KIND OF EMOTIONAL HEMOPHILIA;
[S]HE LACKS THE CLOTTING MECHANISM NEEDED TO MODERATE
[HER] SPURTS OF FEELING. STIMULATE A PASSION,
AND THE BORDERLINE EMOTIONALLY BLEEDS TO DEATH.
JEROLD KREISMAN AND HAL STRAUS,
I Hate You, Dont Leave Me:
Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder
AUTHORS NOTE
Most names have been changed.
The timeline has been compressed for clarity and pace.
UNSOLVED HEART
WHATEVERS BURNING IN ME IS MINE...
AND ILL SPLIT THIS TOWN IN TWO AND EVERYTHING
IN IT BEFORE ILL LET YOU PUT IT OUT!
TONI MORRISON, Sula
I GRADUATED COLLEGE the same week Lisa Lopes set her boyfriends house on fire.
Her fans knew her as Left Eye. Her boyfriend, Andre Rison, played for the Atlanta Falcons. He had been out late. She had been drinking. Things went from bad to worse, said People magazine. Even before the fire, the couple had a combustive relationship. Left Eye didnt mean to burn the house down. She thought the fire would stay contained to the bathtub, she says, but the shoes burned hotter than expected.
I KNOW WHAT SHE MEANS.
I picture the fire roaring up from the roof of the mansion in a pink and orange flash, like the fireworks at Stone Mountain. I lived in a rental that year, a small box where I stored my own rage like torn photographs from my too-young marriage (nineteen) and my too-soon divorce (twenty), a crooked and poorly insulated house where mice walked boldly across the dining room table and the kitchen sprouted gray flowers of mold. I crawled from my bed at 5:00 AM on the morning of July 9, 1994, and opened my front door to watch the fire from my porch forty miles west of Atlanta. I stood on the tiny concrete square holding an unlit cigarette and looked up to see another womans frustration flash above my head like a warning or a mirror.
I didnt really see the blaze from the fire.
I only wish I did. The truth is, I couldnt have.
Even if the Atlanta skyline had been visible in the dark countryside of western Georgia I would not have seen the distress signal on the horizon. Most likely I was sleeping or sexing a Sigma Nu or vomiting red and blue squares of vodka Jell-O.
Lisa Lopes poured lighter fuel on a bathtub full of tennis shoes and threw a lit match on top to punctuate her wordsI dont care anymore!and I didnt care anymore either. Five nights later I raged at the would-have-been-ness of my second wedding anniversary by working my first shift as a stripper at the Coronet Club on Roswell Road in Atlanta.
I WAS SETTING FIRES THAT YEAR TOO.
I WENT CRAZY THAT YEAR TOO.
I TRIED THERAPY. I TRIED COCAINE.
I STOPPED READING. I STOPPED MENSTRUATING.
I changed my name to Summer as if I were not a person but an endless stretch of white-hot days people long for and then wish away. If the fire Left Eye set had seared my wood-panel walls with words like EMOTIONAL HIJACKING or DISPROPORTIONATE REACTION, I would have been too distracted by my own depression to notice.
Eight years later Left Eye will die in a head-on collision and I will again be too absorbed by personal strife to pay attention to news of a celebrity death. I will be packing my books and clothes and knickknacks, thinking about my new home in another state, hoping things will be better when I get there. I will be packing and crying, packing and getting drunk, packing and asking people to remind me not to call the married man I just broke up with. I will be consumed by thoughts of getting away. I will still believe the problem is outside mea matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong peopleand I will speak of these places and people and their wrongness with the same conviction Lisa Lopes speaks of evil spirits chasing her car across Honduras before the crash. My life story is structured by reckless reenactments of panic and flight.
I tend to veer off the road. I tend to overcorrect.
Skid. S- P- I- N. Tense up for the wreck.
BE PATIENT TOWARD ALL THAT IS UNSOLVED IN YOUR HEART AND TRY TO LOVE THE QUESTIONS THEMSELVES.
RAINER MARIA RILKE, Letters to a Young Poet
I TELL THE STORY of being married at nineteen and divorced at twenty over and over.
I have been telling it for fifteen years. I have become less compulsive but for years I spared no detail. All I needed was a dark room and a glass of wine, and I rolled tape.
ACTION: I went to study abroad in France for a summer because a marriage that cant survive six weeks apart is not a marriage worth having. I would have been embarrassed to give up an opportunity to grow and learn and suck the marrow from life out of girlish insecurity. While I was gone my husband moved out. A lawyer drew up divorce papers. Kittens went feral in our apartment. I am unable to match the scenes of him leaving me with scenes from before I flew away to France.
BEFORE is the two of us eating the top portion of the wedding cake saved for a year in the freezer for luck. We lick frozen icing from our fingertips and feel blue about being apart for six weeks. Maybe it will be unbearable. Maybe becoming fluent in French is not worth this pain. Our eyes open wide. Maybe we made a mistake.
AFTER is me on the bedroom floor with my back against the wall and my face coming apart in my hands. I watch him move the contents of his dresser drawers to a duffle bag. He doesnt even look at me when I hiccup and yowl.
AFTER-AFTER is the long depression I misrecognize as missing my ex. I wade through the rush of NEGLECT and LOSS and SADNESS pouring through a hole in my hull. The abruptness changes me. I become angry. I seek pain out and shout at it.
I laughed at people who made promises to each other. I laughed at people who got hurt. What did you expect? I wanted to say. I muttered under my breath. Fools.
I had sex with a boy who dipped snuff. His tobacco-soaked fingers stung between my legs. I wondered if his fiance ever complained. I pushed my body down harder and leaned into the wince. I said forbidden words like GODDAMN. I lost weight. I lost drive. I wore dark lipstick and black leather breakaway thongs that snapped at the hip. I pulled them off on stage, my narrow body a middle finger in the air. I said god is dead. I said love is dead. The person I used to be, I said, shes dead too. I drove away.
I FELL IN LOVE AGAIN FOUR YEARS LATER AND CRAFTED MY LIFE INTO A POEM FOR HIM.
The poem consisted of two words.
LOVE ME.
This lover became more project than partner and I sometimes wished him poetcrippledead in anger at his mixed signals. I worked obsessively to understand the two-sidedness of the relationshiphow much I loved him, how much I wanted him to changeoutlining piles of evidence to friends over drinks. I wanted them to help me figure out what was what.
HE LOVES ME
He invited me to spend a week with him in Argentina. He made my coffee sugary sweet every morning and brought it to me in bed. He said being with me made him want to thank a god he didnt even believe in. He held me closer than close during sex and whispered
