Present
Flowers. Flower petals. White-Winter snowdrops. Watercolour. The sound of rain. Birds singing. Puddles and gloppy mud. Beautiful women. Beautiful men. Beautiful everything – Beautiful everyone. Stars. The night sky. Ballet. Music. Ballads. Sunshine. Lanterns. Wind. Green grass. Checkered tiles. Books. Time. People smiling. People laughing.
I could’ve listed a million things and it still wouldn’t have done my new world justice.
For once I began to see it all.
For once, nothing was rushed – things were simple, precious.
For once, I wasn’t a prisoner in my own brain.
For once, I found appreciation in the beauty around me.
And my God, there was a lot of it.
The day after I filled out the test questionnaire, I called Stacy and booked in three appointments.
For the past two weeks, I’d seen her six times. Six sessions that I poured my heart out to a stranger who didn’t feel like a stranger anymore.
I filled out another five-hundred question booklet and regrouped with Stacy, prepared for the news. When she told me that borderline personality disorder held a nine criteria, and I possessed eight of the symptoms, I broke down.
“So…” I wiped away the stinging in my eyes. “What now? What’s next? Will I be sick forever?”
“For one,” she began, “You’re not sick, Beatrice. We’re going to work through this together, okay? You and me.”
I nodded. I had a partner now. I wasn’t alone. It’s okay. I’m going to be okay.
“I’m going to start by prescribing you a small dose of mood stabilizers and if need be, anti-depressants.”
Medication. Pills. My throat was dry. “Are um… Are they necessary?”
“They can be. We’ll monitor your progress on the dosage for a few weeks. If at any point you feel like they are making you more anxious, in general doing more harm than good, come see me and we’ll talk about other options, okay?”
My cracked lips felt like rough sandpaper as I rubbed them together, forcing pain.
Stacy leaned forward, giving me a reassuring smile. Her eyes were gentle, keen to help. “You’re going to be okay, Beatrice,” she said genuinely. “For what it’s worth, I’m very proud of you.”
I’m very proud of you.
The words a father should tell her daughter.
The words a mother should use to comfort her child.
Neither of those words were ever said to me.
Until now.
I agreed to begin taking the medication with careful optimism.
“If it’ll help.” Jace’s words repeated in my brain.
It’s going to be okay. I’m going to be okay.
Our progressing sessions consisted of Stacy asking me some questions that struck a nerve, and I had to leave the room for a few minutes. But always, she was determined to make sure I felt safe, unthreatened.
She moved her office to a bigger one, where there was an extension of her room that branched out into a small waiting area. Only with all my visits, she catered the space to me.
There were paints and crafts, a bunch of disposable cameras and film, but most importantly, a floor to ceiling window that opened to a landscape of greenery outside the clinic.
“It’s important that you remember these things exist,” she’d told me, “That there is a world outside your mind and it’s really quite exquisite.”
“I never realized I was sick,” I whispered, staring at a nest of birds perched atop a tree branch. “I never clued in.”
“Oh, Beatrice,” she released in her soothing voice. At first I hated it. Now, it felt like a soft kiss from a mother to her daughter.
“You aren’t sick, please stop saying that. You were never sick. BPD stems from deeply rooted trauma, and you’ve experienced so much of it.”
“But maybe there was a way to avoid it? Maybe if I just –”
“You’ve been avoiding your feelings for too long. It’s time you embrace them, embrace that they are a part of you and they’re not trying to cause you harm. You are capable of healing,” she urged, “And you are owed it.”
Owed it.
I remember when I used to believe that the world owed me. That I could stake my claim on anything I wanted because it’s what I deserved for all the shit I’d endured in my life.
Owed.
To think, the things I chased after were unattainable because they never belonged to me in the first place. And I tried to make it fit. I tried to make it work.
It was unachievable from the beginning. Some things were.
Jace was.
And it took me until his brother’s wedding to realize that.
When I heard their vows and sat in the second row, tears in my eyes and watched him with wonder. I pictured us two, standing hand in hand under a beautiful gondola, professing our love for one another.
And then it hit me.
I couldn’t see us doing that.
I couldn’t even imagine the types of things he would say because he just… He just wouldn’t have said anything.
Jace told me he promised to love me once, but he never told me that he truly did. Everything he said he felt for me were all indirect comments that never ensured security.
All Jace wanted from the beginning was to be loved, but he had no intention of loving.
At the reception, I stared longing at the couples dancing, twirling, singing… Loving.
He and I sat at table three and drank champagne, gazing at the world sparkling before us.
Before us.
Not between us.
“Do you want to dance?” I tried. I remember at Winter’s Lodge when he had asked the same of me. When he pulled me onto the club floor and held me close to prove a point.
To prove a point.
Because that’s all it was. That’s all it ever was.
He never did anything with me as the primary focus. I was never a priority, never first. I satisfied him, but I was never enough to fulfill him.
So when he refused to dance, I knew. I knew we were over. We’d been over for a long time now and I just didn’t have the heart to accept it.
But we all had our breaking points. That was mine.
I saw the smiles people wore, the emotion that bled from every inch of their skin, and for the first time, I didn’t envy them.
I was happy for them.
I was happy they found something I didn’t. If it was possible for one, it was possible for all.
It was possible for me.
But as I stared at the beautiful man I’d come to know, I realized I never really did. He never really showed me. And it wouldn’t be possible for us.
We were never made to last.
For so long I felt like I could only amount to the affection Jace showed me, that my worth was a ball of power he held in his hands.
I couldn’t be who I wanted to be when I was with him, because for a while I was nothing if he wasn’t mine.
The acceptance started after I realized I would never become who I was meant to be if he stayed in my life. I would never share the smiles these couples had, the smiles they gave one another out of genuine loyalty.
He consumed me when we were together, but he consumed me most when we weren’t; when I had to worry about who he was talking to, who was better than me.
The right person would have never given me those doubts to begin with.
The right person would have danced with me in a sea of stars or burning lava. The point is –
They would have danced.
A week after Scott and Sabrina’s wedding, I broke down on my kitchen floor and had a panic attack.
An overwhelming tsunami of emotions shot through every scar, every cut, every piece of my flesh that I buried beneath ink. But they screamed at me to remember. To remind me that I was a survivor and I could make it out alive, even if I was covered in wounds.
A week and two days later, I ended things with Jace.
[Finally].
He didn’t take me seriously at first. He thought I’d come back.
“What did I do this time?”
But the second he met my eyes, void of complete and utter devotion, he placed his head in my lap.
“I’m sorry for everything, Blu.”
Sweet words, sweet boy. I was familiar with them. They didn’t hold the same weight as they once did.
Maybe because in just three short weeks, my dull, grey life was lit on fire. I started planting flowers in dead grass, watering the life that deserved to be there.
“Do you even know what you’re apologizing for?”
“Yes,” he sighed, taking hold of my hand. His touch pricked me like icicles. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t ready to love you, even though my heart wanted to.”
I kissed his lips then, softly, to savour the taste of poison and empty promises.
My final kiss that wasn’t intended to start a new – It was to conclude an old.
My final goodbye.
He knew it too.
There had been plenty of endings, I realized, but could never admit. I couldn’t. He was a part of me. I’d made sure of that.
I sought him out from the second I laid my eyes on his blue-green eyes, the storm that swam beneath his irises, the sharp jaw that cut my flesh when he fucked me with selfishness.
As time went on, Stacy and I worked through the deep, emotional manipulation I’d endured by all the characters in my life, including my mother.
I hadn’t realized how much she relied on me to do everything she didn’t want to do.
Not couldn’t do.
Wanted to do.
I picked up the scattered scraps, overcompensating for lacking affection. Time after time after time, I’d volunteered to be a slave to those who provided nothing but pennies and dust. My mom, though bonded by blood, was not family.
Fawn was.
One good friend was better than a thousand acquaintances.
My father, in his own way, may have only loved me with the capacity he possessed, but that didn’t mean he didn’t love me at all.
I stopped blaming myself for his abandonment, because it wasn’t on purpose. It wasn’t my doing.
It wasn’t my fault.
After countless sessions of rehashing my feelings, I accepted that Zac, Kyle, Tyler and Jace didn’t know how to express the love I deserved, and a lot of what I experienced with them was a product of their own personal experiences. Maybe there was genuine care at a point, but it was clouded by unresolved issues that they needed to work through.
Not to say I didn’t play a part. Surely I did. Clearly I did. But to take full responsibility for the hurt bestowed onto me would be harmful, detrimental. I’d been carrying that weight for so long.
It was time to let it go.
It was time to be free.
Months went by that felt like seconds, a full year around the sun approaching the horizon.
My social media was deleted. My job was enriching. New opportunities presented themselves in ways I could only imagine.
Jace and I hadn’t spoken for seven months.
I thought of the time we spent apart, trying to fish for sadness, but I couldn’t. Seeing the improvements in my life, how successful I’d become not just externally, but internally, it was almost difficult to dwell on pain.
“I don’t understand why I liked him so much,” I told Stacy a month back. “I was infatuated beyond belief, beyond control even.”
She relaxed in her chair. “People who live with BPD often experience obsessive tendencies when connecting with those they’re intrigued by. It was a normal response, Beatrice.”
“Is that why I always fought with him over everything?” I leaned closer, “Why I was always so emotional?”
“I wasn’t involved in your relationship; those arguments were between you both. But I can say that emotional regulation is something we’ve been working on because it’s common that feelings are heightened.”
“I don’t feel as terrible as I used to,” I admitted. “Focusing on the good instead of the bad has gotten easier.”
She looked to me inquisitively. “Perhaps it’s because you no longer feel the threat of abandonment any more.”
“What do you mean?”
“From what I learned about you, Beatrice, you’ve always felt like you needed to please other people so they wouldn’t leave. The foundation of your relationship with Jace seemed to be exactly that.
“You thought if you did everything for him, if you could be everything for him, he’d return. And for a while, it seemed he did.”
“He didn’t come back for me, he came back for him and his ego.” The anger was slowly building, but I took in a deep breath and tried to keep it at bay.
Work in progress, I thought.
At least it was progress.
Stacy smiled. “You’re doing very well with your emotional regulation, Beatrice. And if it is true that Jace only returned to you for his ego, then let it be true. We can only concern ourselves with ourselves, right?”
I pressed my lips together, nodding in response. “Right.”
As the weeks went by, my job became more demanding, but I relished the work load. I attended day trips across cities for my job, taking photos of areas I’d never been to and pushed my limits as a photographer.
One trip in Spring, I decided to visit Thornberry to take exclusive photos of the greenery for our activities column. As I was hiking up the trail, I came across a man who’d propped up his camera in the exact location I hoped for myself.
“I’ll wait until you’re done,” I said, clicking through old shots.
He had familiar eyes, green like sea moss with a tinge of Blu. His smile was kind, but deep wrinkles had set into his forehead. I had placed him in his late twenties.
“Photographer too? Or just for fun?” He’d asked.
“I work for Toronto Pix, under TTC Travels.”
“Ah,” he snapped a photo, then adjusted his lens. “How do you like it?”
I’d gotten better with small talk when talking to strangers over recent months. If I had the capability of dishing out all my personal problems to Stacy, I knew I was indestructible.
“It’s a dream job,” I confessed. I wore a smile at that.
“Lucky you,” he adjusted his position, “I wish I could have stable income but I’m just a freelance photographer.”
“Freelancing gives you creative freedom to take photos of whatever you like, though. No one can tell you what to do.”
He pulled back from his lens and looked at me, the corner of his lips lifting as he extended a hand. “Baxter Boland.”
Boland.
It had to have been a coincidence.
But the longer I looked in his eyes, the side profile cut like mountain peaks, I knew it wasn’t.
“Do you know Jace Boland?”
He took a step back, assessing me now with caution. “He’s my brother, how do you know him?”
How did I know Jace Boland, that really was the question. How did I want his brother to know me? Did I even care anymore? It’d been so long since we talked, our relationship seemed like a blink in existence.
“We were sort of friends,” I settled on. “I’m Blu – Beatrice, Henderson.”
In one swift movement, he secured his camera wrap around his neck and swore. “Blu,” he said my name in disbelief. “You were the girl Jace couldn’t shake.”
I laughed in discomfort. “I think I’m insulted.”
“No, no,” he put out a hand, “That’s not what I meant. He talked about you before, fuck, this is so insane that I’m meeting you like this.”
“Likewise,” I chuckled. We felt like a lifetime ago. “How is he doing?”
“Not sure, we don’t talk much.”
A part of my heart sank for him, even if the connection no longer burned with the passion it once possessed. His brothers meant everything to him, and those were probably the only relationships he insisted on keeping. It must be hard, I thought. I guess some things never change.
But I did. And his life was no longer my concern.
“He may be working on a business with his friend, but I heard that through the grapevine.” He laughed so I mirrored his, but the protective part of me that sided with Jace lingered deep below.
So I said my goodbyes to Baxter Boland and found another area along another trail, forgetting the interaction as quickly as it came.
“It’s weird,” I told Stacy the following day. “I thought I’d feel more.”
“Why?” She asked.
“I don’t know, I guess because he was such a persistent presence in my life and seeing his brother reminded me of that.”
“But you didn’t feel much, you said.”
“No,” I shook my head, “I didn’t. His life doesn’t bother me anymore.”
“And are you happy about that?”
I rubbed the tips of my dark blue hair, the only remaining part of me that held some semblance of my old self. The person who loved Jace Boland.
“I’m happy that he can’t hurt me anymore.”
“Well Beatrice, people can only hurt you if you let them.”
I repeated her words like a mantra on my drive home, stopping at the pharmacy before darting for my bathroom.
“Am I really doing this?” I released, scooping out the black box dye I’d just purchased. The scissors were staring at me from a cupholder. I picked them up too.
“Fuck it.”
The first chop felt like a knife in my gut, the second a wrench in my spine. But the more I snipped, the better I felt; like forcing out dead weight, weeding out the thorns.
When my hair was just below my shoulders, I mixed the dye solution and took in a deep breath. My blue hair was a part of me, the fractured girl who had no father, no mother – no one to love.
But I was no longer that girl anymore.
I had me.
I loved me.
As the dye coated my hair, tears escaped my eyes. They resembled rainwater.
I covered up the part of me that was Jace’s rain.
I covered up the strands that wept over my insecurities, my flaws and defeats.
I covered up the sadness, the loss, the grief and the pain until I was no longer blue.
I was no longer Blu.
A few days later, I sat in Stacy’s office, listening to her routine questions, when my phone rang.
The caller ID read: Jace Boland.
A million thoughts shuddered beneath my skin. Baxter probably told him that we spoke.
I lifted my phone to show Stacy who was calling.
“Are you going to answer?”
I stared at the screen, watching it ring. Time was slow, my breathing slower. What could he possibly want? What could I possibly give him that he hasn’t already had?
He sucked the life out of me.
He drained me of all my energy.
He would do it again if I let him.
If I let him.
I silenced my phone and watched the call go to voicemail, whispering to myself, “People can only hurt you if you let them.”
And today –
Today I didn’t let him.
Tomorrow I wouldn’t let him.
Onward, I’d never let him again.
“Well, that settles that,” Stacy released, but I could tell she was proud. I was prouder.
“Tell me,” she said, pulled out her notepad, “What’s the worst thing that happened to you today?”
My hands were shaking, my heartbeat erratic, but I did it. I fucking did it.
I hung up on Jace Boland.
And I didn’t call back.
My eyes fluttered closed, taking comfort in the blankness of my emotions. “I guess…” I swallowed, “A part of me died.”
Because that’s what it felt like. Turning a new leaf, healing. I drowned before I resurfaced. I struggle for breath before I inhaled fresh air.
But there was strength in my scars. I finally saw the beauty in that.
I chose happiness, just as I chose pain.
All choices nonetheless, all mine to make.
“A part of you died.” She scribbled something on paper. “And the best?”
I shut my eyes once more, and melted in the thought of peace.
The smell of muffins. Red velvet cake. Bells ringing. Floppy hats. Cinnamon and spice. Fresh clothing. Lavender. Cobblestone walkways. Gardens.
A life I could live.
A life I will live.
When I thought about all the loss I’d endured, the residual ache lingered, but I was no longer suffering. All the precious parts of life conquered the dark, and I was the phoenix that rose from the ashes.
A ghost of a smile painted my lips as I peeled off one shackle at a time, the chains that I’d been bound to through years of agony, my own personal torment haunting me no longer.
Today, I chose me.
Tomorrow, I’d choose me.
Forever.
“The best part of today, Beatrice?” Stacy repeated, a curious look on her face.
A tear escaped the corner of my eye, but it was no longer rainwater.
It was the sun.
Goodbye, Blu Henderson.
“A part of me died.”
