Page 115 - Men’s Health - USA (December 2019)

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F ck it. I’ll just say it.
*
I’M SCARED.
KAY, SO I’M GOING to talk
a little bit about myself here.
I’m going to keep it brief
O and breezy. About two years
ago, my life started falling apart at an
alarming clip. I was married—spoiler
alert: was—and had two young children.
We all lived in New York in a too-small
apartment, and I was at a point in my
career as a writer where things, I thought,
should be getting easier, but they weren’t.
Everyone else had a house upstate and
a Subaru. What was I doing wrong? I
had always had a lot of turmoil with my
personal relationships, but as my cohort
aged and had kids of their own, I found I
had fewer and fewer close friends on whom
I could rely. My marriage was similarly
reliably tempestuous, but recently it was
tempest all day. My emotions, mean-
while, were going haywire. I struggled
with intense, body-clenching rage and
existential squid-ink darkness.
I had lived with myself my entire life.
No matter how miserable I was, that mis-
ery was me, if that makes sense. And so I
didn’t seek professional help. Who would
I be, I worried, if this clenched mass of
mess that was me was dissolved? I was
scared—scared of what therapy might
reveal, scared to let go of the shore and
drift into deep water, scared to have to
put into words what I felt. good to be able to talk to someone who
If I hadn’t had kids, I’m reasonably cer-
tain I never would have gone to therapy
at all. But in the midst of what I guess was
a mental breakdown—later I learned to
call it an episode of emotional dysregu-
lation—I tried to commit suicide. It was
pretty rough. My wife had our five-year-
old son, Achilles, talk to me through our
bedroom door. He didn’t know what was
up, just that something was wrong. And
because trying 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 is
too sad (and also hard to explain with
said belt around your neck), eventually I
emerged and lived. At that point, seeking
help was a matter of life and death for me.
Even then I dithered out of fear. But
what scared me more than going to ther-
apy was what not going would mean. The
evidence that I was struggling with men-
tal illness was incontrovertible; that it
was affecting the people I love was equally
uncontestable. Because I have children
and love my children, I knew I needed to
get help, not for me so much as for them.
I’m already too messed up to be happy.
But my kids deserve happiness and a
father who can love and be loved freely. In
my bones, the thought that I’d pass on to
them my unresolved issues—or, rather,
the contortions that grew like calluses
around those issues—was repugnant.
So I ended up in therapy, talking to
a nice lady named Julia. Around me,
in that office suite and in adjoining
buildings, there were people just like me
talking to people just like her. How cliché,
I thought, looking at her ready-to-pluck
tissues and well-hugged crushed-velvet
pillow. But week by week, it felt really
wasn’t furious at me for a decade of crazi-
ness, who could see me with compassion
and professional compunction. Who
cares if I paid her $200 an hour?
After a bit, Julia suggested I might have
something called borderline personality
disorder, a constellation of symptoms that
include suicidal ideations and attempts,
uncontrollable rage, impulsive behavior,
black-and-white thinking—all traits I had
tagged as mine in the coat check of ego.
That character I carried and that I called
“me”; that guy who punched walls and
flew into rages; that guy who tumble-dried
in the cycles of shame: that guy? Not me.
Not really. I found I could let that image
of who I was go. The more I understood
about BPD, the more I understood what
triggered what and why. I’m not saying
that I’m not responsible for the suffering
to others I caused. I am. But I didn’t have to
beat myself up as much as I had.
Unfortunately, there’s no medical
remedy for BPD, no “stop being a crazy
dick” pill. Since much of the disorder is
biochemical—basically, my mind is hard-
wired to think those I love the most are
constantly attacking me—BPD will be my
constant companion. Because it’s largely
genetic, it also might be my bequeath-
ment to my sons, too.
Therapy wasn’t enough to save my
marriage. Therapy can’t make me travel
back in time to save my kids their fear
or forward to salve their suffering. But
what it did, and the reason I am still
grateful for the past three years of my
life, is that it allowed me to fully know
myself. It’s like I hadn’t fully put my
weight on this earth. I was holding
part of myself apart, suspended, like
a terrified marionette. Now I’m here.
I’m happy in a way I couldn’t be before
and sad in a way I couldn’t be before. I’m
tender where I was hard, looser where I
was tight. And you know what? I’m more
comfortable admitting, “I’m scared,”
and still going to sit on a couch to get to
know myself a little better.
JOSHUA DAVID STEIN has written for pub-
lications including The New York Times,
Fatherly, Esquire, and The Guardian.