A Life Worth Living by Marie Berger

A Life Worth Living
£12.00


By Marie Berger
ISBN: 978-1-84747-188-8
Published: 2007
Pages: 123
Key Themes: borderline personality disorder,
Description
This immensely reflective and emotional book deals with the difficulties faced by a person suffering from borderline personality disorder. BPD is often thought of as the most severe of the most common mental illnesses and is considered by some to be untreatable. This book replaces much of the myths surrounding this illness with cold, hard facts and as such is a very important and profound read.
About the Author
Marie Berger was born in May 1945 in Reading, Berkshire. She trained to become a teacher and is also a qualified masseuse. She is now an author by profession and lives with her husband and her children in Lincoln. She is fond of travelling, foreign languages, pastel drawing and of course her writing.
Book Extract
Declaring my sins in another language feels easier. A short break in an attractive town on the French coast provides a brief respite from the overwhelming negativity inside my head.
On impulse I’ve wandered into a church, found a priest willing to hear my Confession. A modern-minded priest who wears no collar and has dispensed with the traditional confessional box. We sit facing each other across a table.
I reel off a list of offences against a God I’m not even sure I believe in. The priest gives me absolution, asks me about myself, my life. I refer briefly to my unhappy childhood, my rigid, often-harsh religious upbringing, my present emotional problems. He listens sympathetically. Daringly, I say I’ve only occasionally attended Mass in recent years.
“Which means I’m doomed to Hell when I die, aren’t I?” I challenge him. “God loves you, He is not there to punish you.” His tone is kindly.
“So that wasn’t a mortal sin?” The priest smiles, shakes his head. I stare at him, amazed. I’d expected a sermon on the evil of my ways.
“You’re the first priest not to condemn my actions. But I think I’ve lost my faith, I don’t know if there is a God or where to find Him.” “He’s inside you,” the priest answers with conviction. I remind him that he’s not given me the usual penance for my sins.
“When you are sitting beside the sea today just say thank you to God,” he says gently. What, no Our Fathers, no Hail Marys, no act of retribution for my offences? I thank him profusely. Already I’m feeling better. I walk out into the bright sunshine feeling an inner warmth, an unaccustomed sense of well-being.
*
The vast expanse of beautifully kept lawns looks welcoming. Today represents my last possibility of therapy. At almost sixty years old I’m running out of options. I feel irritable, sick, intensely nervous. I haven’t slept properly for a week.
I’m being ushered along an expensively carpeted corridor to an office. A friendly-looking man introduces himself as the psychiatrist. His handshake is firm, warm. He invites me to sit, begins by asking about my problems. Suddenly my carefully rehearsed words disappear. I can hardly concentrate on what he’s asking or on how I’m responding. I’m talking about the past, trying to show how I came to be in the mess I’m in today. I explain that my natural mother breastfed me for three months before fostering me out eight times. She finally realized she couldn’t keep her nine-month-old baby. I tell him bitterly that Mummy and Daddy adopted me as a “pet” for their own daughter, Rita. I refer to my happy early years with Mummy, describe how things went terribly wrong when I started school, when I was not completely under her control. Suddenly nothing I did was right; I could never match up to Rita. I want him to understand the extent of my efforts to please her, my desperation to become exactly like my sister so that Mummy and Daddy would find me as lovable. I feel shame wash over me as I tell him about Mummy’s scornful reaction.
I talk about the awful beatings from Daddy which resulted in a neighbour threatening to call the NSPCC, my pleading with her not to and vowing inwardly she would never again hear my cries.
I’m lost in the past.
“Did he hit ever you again?” The psychiatrist asks. “I don’t remember. But I knew, despite everything, that Daddy truly loved me. I was never sure if Mummy did since she continued to tell me how stupid and worthless I was. She always ignored my tears, my pain, my unhappiness.”
I feel like crying.
I tell him about my compulsion to be perfect, to become like the saints the nuns at school always talked about. I confide my horrible fear of hurting Christ by, as we were told, banging the nails further into his hands and feet on the cross whenever we were naughty. I recall Evelyn’s funeral, when our class had to watch our ten-year-old classmate being buried and then were told, “Now, Evelyn was a good girl - but what if it had been one of you…?”
The psychiatrist is listening intently. “How do you see your problems now?”
“I feel empty, self-destructive. I dislike everything about myself.”
I mention my life-threatening overdose, little over a year ago, an action I deeply regret, the memory of it so raw it makes talking difficult.
“There are still times that I want to destroy myself. Only the thought of this dreadful legacy for my family holds me back.”
He looks thoughtful. “I think our type of therapy will suit you.”
Relief spreads through me.
“Four months should do it.”
I’m astounded. They can turn my life around in four months? Perhaps miracles do happen!
Our interview over, he takes me to the dining room where I’m introduced to some of the residents. The food is good, the residents and staff friendly. One of the residents shows me round. Each room has its own en suite. If I could forget the reason I’m here I could easily imagine that this tastefully decorated, airy, spacious building is a five star hotel. During the drive home I silently carry out endless tortuous post-mortems.
“Most people stay for eight months so I don’t know why they’re thinking of throwing me out after four.” “You’re being negative again,” my husband sighs. But, if the psychiatrist is right, in a few months he’ll see a changed wife - one he’ll scarcely recognize!