Great Falls

            The call center where I work is called Great Falls Marketing, though you wouldn’t know it unless you knew someone who presently worked there or worked there yourself. Even former employees lose track of the names on account of them changing all the time. There are alotta outside things that change about the place, like the lower-level salesfolk (the turnover rate’s higher than most fast food places), the managers who either get busted for doing drugs on the job or moving out of the city to find other work, and the many products. Like most places that base employee’s pay on commission, some products are considered more important than others. The importance of selling a certain product depends on how much money they pump into the call center. 

I guess that’s sorta obvious. Sorry.

You know those TV advertisements for products that seem to always cost just ‘one low payment of 19.95’? The butt-wipers, potted plant litter boxes, cure-all supplements, and specialty pancake grills? All those products meant to make some aspect of life significantly easier—those are the ones we sell at Great Falls. The highest call volumes occur early in the morning for the old fogies and stay-at-home mothers or late at night for the drunken prank-callers or unemployed fathers. Surprisingly, most of the people who invest their money in, well, what I’d consider mostly useless products are not the rich housewives of fat-cats with disposable incomes, but rather the poor folks, the working class, the very people that work at Great Falls. 

Anyhow, I’ve been working here for three years, which you’d think would give some kinda sense of job stability. That’s not the way it works here though, or, from what I understand, at alotta call centers. Even though the longer you’ve been there means you’ve had more time to work on your sales pitch and the more comfortable you become trying to desperately sell relatively useless products to old cranks who are hard of hearing and don’t have money, the fact is that the company has to pay you more for each sales you make the longer you’ve been there, and companies hate spending money when they don’t have to. What I’ve noticed is that callers already got their minds made up when they make the call anyway, so inexperienced youngsters who are grateful to make more than the minimum wage and can type faster and use the computer with more ease than us old folks make the best employees. It’s a real shame how that works. 

On the sales floor there’s not much community. Great Falls Marketing’s building is the shell of what used to be an Ames department store which went under like so many other stores did when the last of the factories moved out of Lewiston and there were no jobs, which meant no income coming in and therefore no money, gas, or motivation to visit different stores for all the family essentials. That’s when Wal-Mart came in, but that’s a story for another time. Like all department stores, the inside is huge—much bigger than you’d think on account of the aisles and department signs and tall shelves that are now absent. If you could take the roof off and have an aerial view of Great Falls’ insides, you’d see a labyrinth of desks with computers and swivel chairs placed in circles with gray cubicle walls only tall and wide enough to keep in each sales rep’s voice from bothering their neighbor. 

(unfinished)

Notes on Borderline Personality Disorder

01. HOW DO I BEGIN?

            “This is about you,” the woman smiled warmly, “How do you want to begin?”

            This woman was my new therapist. She told me to call her Winnie. She had a very relaxed, yet purposeful demeanor. I guess I’d describe her as an ‘intensely zen’ black woman with wild curly hair that hung freely in all directions. I was drawn to that hair, which was black but for bits of grey streaks that made her seem wise. Her clothing was very earthy: lots of greens and browns, loose-fitting, professional yet casual. It was very Ithaca. She was very Ithaca, I concluded. I’ve wanted so badly to embody this place, especially because people there always seemed just so damn content with their lives.

“Well,” my voice cracked pathetically, “I guess we should start with the purpose of all this. Right?”

Winnie nodded. What was the purpose? I looked around. There was a bookshelf neatly packed with psychology and self-help books with titles like “Walking on Eggshells” and “I Hate  You, Don’t Leave Me!” I stifled a laugh. Winnie was apparently a specialist in Borderline Personality Disorder and that’s why I was there. Was Winnie, too, a borderline? I wanted to ask her. If she was, did that mean I could one day get my shit together and have a fulfilling, decent-paying job one day? Could I have friends and love people without hurting them? Could I feel and act the way healthy people feel and act? Could I ever be just, I don’t know, happy to be alive?

“If there’s one thing I know about myself with complete certainty is that I’m into goals. I always have been. Maybe it’s that working class ‘if you can dream it, you can achieve it’ bullshit American ideology I was force-fed growing up, but I do tend to work as hard as I can toward something.”

This attribute, I’d found, could be either beneficial or harmful to me, depending entirely on circumstance. That’s the thing with being Borderline, though. My perception of the entire universe could change in a moment.

“I know about my problem. I’ve done an insane amount of online research. I’ve gone to support groups. I even joined an intense twice-weekly group therapy session specifically for people with BPD. I know all that stuff so we can skip the educational blah-blah whatever, I just want to fix my life. Now that I know the reason behind it all, I just want to figure out how to live normally.”

She raised a brow.

“How do you define ‘normal’?”

Damnit. I knew that was coming. Suddenly I felt frustrated. Come on, she knew what I meant. Did this lady really think I needed to define normality or clarify that I really meant I wanted to live healthy?

“I don’t mean normal, I mean healthy. Sorry.” 

“What does healthy living mean to you?”

How predictable. She was starting to lose me. I questioned her ability.

            After a dramatic sigh, I told her my vision of an ideal, healthy life. If I could have it my way, Isobel Libby would be a recognized name in the artsy-fart literary community. I’d be a published writer and a professor of writing. I’d have tenure, a good credit score, and a fat savings account, living comfortably but modestly in Ithaca or the outskirts. Accompanying me in this fantasy life would be a faithful, intelligent husband who loved me unconditionally, a couple of uncharacteristically sociable housecats, and maybe a vegetable garden or something like that.

What would a typical day look like in a life like this?

            Imagine! I’d wake up without hitting the snooze button a thousand times, totally ready and willing to begin a new day. My husband and I would shower together and then over breakfast we’d debate whether The Smiths or The Cure were superior in expressing the pain and sadness of the human condition through song. We’d agree on The Smiths. Then, I’d go to work and inspire hungover, disenchanted undergrads to write about their own unique pain and it would work. Students would leave class inspired, which would inevitably make me feel accomplished. On weekends I’d do things healthy, content, middle-to-upper class adults do.

            Winnie laughed when I told her this. She asked me what I meant and admittedly I wasn’t sure.

            “You know, go on a wine tour, or go kayaking or some shit. Visit a national landmark. Have brunch with friends. I’d love to just go to an art gallery and stand there admiring the famous artwork without hating myself the entire time for not having my own artwork displayed in some swanky gallery. I want to have sex and feel comfortable enough about it to not wake up extra-early in the morning to fix my hair and do my makeup in the bathroom, for like a whole hour, just so I can avoid looking unattractive to the guy for even a second. I want to be able to save my money instead of compulsively spending what I earn on useless things that, in the moment, I’m certain will make my whole life better if I own it. Does this make sense?”

Did it? Winnie didn’t say, so I continued.

“Basically, I want to have control over my life—but I mean, also acknowledge that there are things I don’t have control over, and I want to feel okay with that fact. You know?”

            She knew. I could tell from the look on her face. Maybe she could help me after all.

Winnie, according to her degrees on the wall, had apparently lived in Arizona and Texas before settling down in the liberal, hippie, college town of Ithaca, located in what most people consider “upstate New York” but is more accurately called central New York. I began to wonder about Winnie’s origins. Did she grow up religious and conservative? Was that why she moved here? Or was it more random? Is the job market for therapists competitive?

            “You’re very self-aware, Isobel.”

            I beamed. Positive reinforcement has always been my favorite part of therapy.

            “How can you know that?”

Come on Winnie, convince me of my own intelligence.

“Isn’t that sorta one of the major hurdles of being Borderline, the identity thing? Like, I can think I’m self-aware, but what if I’m lying to myself and make myself believe the lie in order to fit the emotions I’m experiencing? I could lie to you about my entire life history, tell you my made-up version of how everything went down, and make my whole character conform to what I think you want my character to be. What then!”

“Of course you can do that,” she said, “Borderlines most often do. That’s why it can be hard to treat. Sufferers of BPD are some of the most therapy-resistant individuals out there for precisely those reasons. But you know all that. And I know you know. It appears to me, Isobel, that you’re well-informed on the nature of that which causes you pain. So, perhaps we can start our therapy by integrating what you’ve learned into your daily life,” she adjusted her glasses, “The fantasy life you described isn’t all that unrealistic, you know.”

I was in love. She was saying everything I wanted her to say. Yes, I can get better! Things will work out after all!

Upon leaving her office, some sort of natural high enveloped me; I felt confident, hopeful, and empowered. Why did I feel so fucking good? To be real, I’ve always had a raging hard-on for introductory meetings with therapists, doctors, academic advisors, or other figures of authority in my “betterment.” I get high off telling people about my tumultuous childhood and all my miserable problems. It makes me look like a fucking champion contrasted with my accomplishments. After those intro meetings, I’d walk out the door with the gait of the triumphant underdog at the end of some movie critics would call ‘heartwarming.’

Deciphering one’s own identity is at the core of many issues for someone with Borderline Personality Disorder. When I feel like someone else truly knows or understands me, it makes me feel like I know myself. This can be a problem. For me, it meant constantly performing a role, some fragmented version of myself, emphasizing the personal characteristics that a particular person would like and hiding those that would prove unfavorable. To my father, I was a diligent, asexual, intelligent hard worker, bursting with promise and destined to achieve the sort of economically-flourishing, prestigious life that he always wanted for himself. He lived far away and I made damn sure to fax every report-card, mail local newspaper clippings of my name on the Honor Roll list, email him links that featured me on the Internet, send him pictures of me Accomplishing Things. When he’d ask me about my day or what I’d been up to, it was almost as if the answers went through some sort of filter I’d subconsciously constructed to give people the best possible story—the story that ends the way they’d want it to end.

For this reason, throughout my life, I’ve gravitated toward people who are open about their problems. The depressed, the addicted, the lonely. In a similar sense, I’ve also been drawn to others in search of identity. If I could figure other people out, that is, to discover the nature of their existential pain, I could pretend it was mine, too. The most salient example of this behavior was probably at thirteen. Isn’t it for all of us, really?

To Amanda, my best friend in the eighth grade, I was not only a fellow misanthrope and jaded anarchist, but a real rebel artist, not one of those fucking posers. Fuck them! They were even worse than boring, square people because they pretended to be marginalized and rejected. They didn’t care about art or music or culture the way we did, spending hours in the basement listening to underground indie bands and educating ourselves about their histories. Yeah, the loud distortion was a little deafening, but so was life. Fuck easy-listening! Fuck popular music! Fuck popular--anything! If our parents hurt us, if our government lied to us, if our God damned us, then fuck ‘em all. Goddamnit, we trusted them, and they fucked us over. When we were little, we thought the world was one way, and then we learned it wasn’t anything we thought it was.  I would compare my emotional baseline in middle school to how you feel the first time you learn what the pilgrims actually did to the American Indians when white people claimed America as theirs.

Fueled by feelings of betrayal and some serious cognitive dissonance regarding our perception of the world we lived in, Amanda and I constructed our identities based solely on opposing the majority. It was my personal mission to embody the opposite of I thought society wanted me to be. Admittedly, my knowledge of society’s ideal citizen was mostly informed by punk rock lyrics and contemporary films depicting American dystopias. In retrospect, it was perhaps this period in which I was most unsure about who I really was, but hey, can you really blame me? I think we all experience identity distortion on the bumpy road to adulthood. The road for some people, I guess, can be really, really fucking long.

How other people saw me used to completely determine how I saw myself. I’m sure most people can relate. You know how in twelve step meetings they always reference a Higher Power? For the longest time, mine was praise, approval, or being rewarded. If I sat and thought about it for a while, I’m sure I could attribute the entire course of my life to my addiction to praise. Even writing. Though I’ve kept journals since forever (the oldest from age five), I started to take storytelling seriously when I was in the fifth grade. It all started with a lie.

Do you remember when computers first became a common thing to have in the household? I harbored secret feelings of superiority because I could type at a speed that could make my mother’s eyes fall out. I loved typing. Being able to create words by making my fingers dance in memorized routines seemed to me like practicing the violin or playing a sport. I’d pick a children’s book from the mess of books in my closet and type out the entire story in a word document. I found this activity entirely enjoyable and worthwhile. Soon I began to print the stories out, examine them for typing errors, and admire the word count I’d put at the bottom of the last page. As such, the stories became my own. One day, I put a ten page story on my teacher’s desk when the closing bell rang. It was not titled. The story simply began at the top of the page and ended with: “Word Count – 6,218 by Carrie-Lynne Davis.”

Naturally, when Mr. Bee came to class the next day, drank his coffee, and began reading this legitimately publishable story supposedly written by me, a mere fifth grader, in his class, he probably thought he’d stumbled upon a child prodigy. I was treated as such when I arrived to school that day. Mr. Bee took me aside and sang my praises. I was a promising young writer, destined for literary greatness! He asked me to read it to the class and when I did, they too began treating me as if I were gifted. When I got home that day, I kicked my mother off the computer because, I told her snidely, I had to work. This was when I began to type a story of my own. It was like telling a story to a friend, but my fingers the voice and my friend the glowing white nothingness of an empty word document.

I desperately wanted to know people, and then show people how well I know them, and most important of all, I wanted people to know me and love me for how well I know them. That’s what writers do, right? I suppose this could be applied to all artists. Now, don’t get twisted, I’d never try to start one of those freshman seminar “What is Art?” conversations or anything, but I do think that writers have to not only live their lives but also garner the ability to see it in terms of the bigger picture, and by that I mean the human condition, or what it means to be alive, to be conscious, to feel.

Some character in some movie once said that the best way to make someone like you is to ask questions about them. People love talking about themselves. I know I certainly love talking about myself. Or maybe I just like telling stories. I’ve been doing it ever since I could.

After I left the mental health clinic, it was off to the local coffee shop to embark on the literary career of my dreams. I sat there with my laptop and a coffee, feeling slightly like an asshole. What do you write about when you discover that the nature of your human struggle stems from the lack of a consistent human identity? Could you then write about anything or nothing at all?