The Space Between: finding a sense of "self" in a lack of memories

My counselor once asked me what it felt like to have a mother with Borderline Personality Disorder and I told her that it felt like falling backwards.  When you fall forwards,  you see what is in front of you, you know the good, the bad, and everything in between.  You are aware of your outcome and can, in some way, brace yourself.  Falling backwards is trickier.  You don't know what's behind you, amplifying the fear.  That was my mother:  a fall backwards, where you didn't know what would happen, but you knew there would be no safe place to land.

From my earliest memories I recall feeling desperate for my mother.  Yes, strange and hard to articulate, but I truly felt that she and I were connected and that my leaving her would be detrimental to both of us.  I could not be separated from her without screaming or occasionally vomiting and had an extremely difficult time socially and in school for the early years of my life because of this fact.  There was no division. When she cried-- I cried, when she hurt-- I hurt, when she hated-- I hated. There was nothing for me but her and I did not know where she started and I began, and she wanted it that way.

To understand why I felt this, you must first understand that those with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) have an extreme fear of abandonment and isolate their victims, creating an environment where the BPD person is "God" --sending a consistent message of everyone else being evil or wrong.  Couple this manipulation, which is akin to brainwashing, with a child being raised from birth in this world, and you realize the unhealthy bond that formed between my mother and me.  An insecure attachment, where inconsistent affection, intermingled with abusive language, aloof interactions and threats of abandonment were the norm. I needed her. She was my only salvation and she wasn't going to let me forget it.  Yet the salvation was never there, and I clung to the edge always hoping it would come.

"Insidious Rift", graphite drawing on vellum (2010).
  The image represents my feelings of separating
 from my mother after several years of therapy,.
being torn away from what I once thought
was my "whole".  The reversed faces, a reflection
of my love/hate feelings toward her.

While I can recall my desperate attempts to stay connected to my mother, there are many moments that I cannot remember at all.  In those passages it feels like I didn't actually exist, much like the dreamless sleep of anesthesia, where you remember before and after, with nothing in between. Fragmented bits that occasionally flash back when provoked to the surface like a boil, influenced by a present day event or occurrence.

It is this absence that makes it difficult to view photos and feel a sense of attachment to the child in them.  I cannot see "me" or recognize any relation to who I am now.  All except for one. There is one photo where I am present.  I am sitting at the kitchen table with my legs bent up under me, I am painting and I am content. I am fully me.  I can feel it.  I am there in the space between.  The margin that existed between me and my mother and the girl I presented to the world.

I know now that that is where I would go in those moments when I would "break" from my mother.  I know this is where I was when I was drawing, when I would hide in my closet from her fury, and when I would escape to the woods to sit on the ground that absorbed my tears.  I am there in that photo, in the space between.  I am there in the space that saved me.

And we all have that space.  The gap that exists between what we want the world to think of us and the person who is perceived by others.  It is the expanse that defines the real you.   Maybe you feel it when you are walking alone, being creative, or as you drift off to sleep.  There you are, wearing no other hats or bending to the whims of other people. There you are, fully yourself, being the person you were before the world told you what it expected from you.

As I sit here and type, I am in the space between.  Since ending therapy two years ago I visit more often and with intent.  It is the sole reason that I spend so much time alone. So much of my life used to be intertwined in another person's personality and I was lost in the chaos.  But I no longer feel that chaos.  I finally know who I truly am.

Here I am, and it is a pleasure to meet me.