[Part I available here]
[Part II available here]
Dr. Pauline Picot //
Third and Final Part – The Bomb and the Comet
My brain abruptly wakes up and sends siren calls to my whole body, piercing through skin and muscles, bones and veins. But I can’t take cover, as the bomb is inside. /ACCEPTING\ The good old bomb. The good old menace. All of you take cover then, for I am scared I might hurt you when I explode and fragment all over the place. But there is no one there, except me. /ACCOMMODATING\ Good morning, powerful and destructive me. I know you. I slept with you. In fact, I have been sleeping with you my whole life. You are tough to take, but I won’t give up on you. /ADAPTING\ So don’t be too cocky.
After this little chat – my psychiatrist told me it was part of my coping mechanisms, and that I shouldn’t judge myself for it, so there you go – I get up. /ADJUSTING\ I go painfully through the morning motions, still ready for anything to blow up, forgetting it is only me making the ticking (or is it ? isn’t the whole world all ready to blow up ?). /CALIBRATING\ Nobody there, so nobody witnessing this impalpable and yet overwhelming alert. /COPING\ And even if they were here, they would probably not comprehend this inner sense of impending crisis. My mother is currently the only one who fully does. Others try hard – and they are the most precious people in my life. /EMBRACING\
I take 10 mg of Citalopram antidepressant, and in extreme cases – if the bomb really feels about to go off – a quarter of Lexomil. I am not happy about it, but I guess this is, for now, my morning recipe. /FORGIVING\ There is no proper remedy to Borderline Personality Disorder, so it is all about experimenting – in consultation with the psychiatrist – whatever works best for each constitution. /HOLDING ON\ In my own experience, medicine is neither a magical discharge of everything, nor an abduction of the self. It is rather a block to the unhinged door, a blotting paper of the soul, an emotional tourniquet. /HOLDING TOGETHER\ And it is for the best : I want to do the hard work.
And then /HOLDING UP\ it can be ten minutes, one hour, six hours later /MAKING DO\ and it doesn’t have anything to do with the medicine, that brave medecine faced with the unfathomable /MANAGING\ – it can be motivated by a serious matter or a small detail – – /SETTLING\ after all the threatening, crushing and withering – – – something shifts. Something recedes. Something lets go and just lets me be. And this ravaging porosity of mine turns on itself to become an indescribable sensation of living and breathing into the very texture of reality. And then it hits ; but it is not a bomb. It is a comet of utter strength and pure love and compassion for everyone and understanding of everything. And above all, an absolute, unreasonable and miraculous certainty of my safety and everyone’s.
I know the menace will return. /TOLERATING\ I know it will shift again. But for now I am wrapped in the most exquisite sensation of power. It is almost too much, but I have to embrace it. Yes, I would rather be quiet. I would rather know stillness without sadness, and joy without overflowing. But I have the rest of the day – and the rest of my life – to learn my way through equanimity. /UNDERSTANDING\ For now I have to dance, thank someone, bake something, congratulate myself on having gone through another bomb alert. My brain shoots my whole body with glitter and gold, piercing through skin and muscles, bones and veins. /WELCOMING\ I won’t take cover from myself.
Cover Picture by Pauline Picot
Proofreading by Dr. Madeleine Mant
