Alice Miller says: hold up / wait a minute / let me put some boom in it. Needs are NOT foolish or too much. They do not need to be suppressed or apologized for. WE ARE NOT MADE OF STEEL. We have needs! Okay?! And parents and lovers and friends are supposed to listen and respond appropriately. If they can't - Alice Miller says WHEN they can't - the CHILD WIFE LOVER loses a piece of her humanity. We chip each others' fragile edges and step away from the mess as if we are not responsible. Deal or no deal. Pact or no pact. [...] The psychiatrist Lawrence Kayton published an article [...] on vampires and the phenomenology of schizophrenia. Both respond to real or perceived deprivation with oral sadism. Biting is the shadow side of sucking. Intimacy hurts. The caped embrace cloaks the attack. THE HEART EXISTS TO BE STOLEN, DRAlNED, SPIT-ROASTED, AND DEVOURED. Kayton says non-vampires need to cut vampires a break. Look at the dilemma they face! How about some sympathy for the undead? Imagine opening your mouth and finding attachment hunger so vast the virgin objects of affection run screaming or shrivel in your arms like dried fruit. Borderlines - whose rage marks a dramatic pit stop on the schizoaffective spectrum - know LOVE BITES. Our rage is perverse. Like a strange child, the rage walks backwards. Sarcasm takes scattered steps in a zigzag toward the beloved. In the most disorganized moments, the borderline throws her whole body sideways in the leap and spin of a parasuicidal gesture, emptying a bottle of Klonopin into her mouth and chewing the chalky yellow pills while her spouse scrapes the paste from her tongue with desperate tooth-nicked fingers. High-pitched shrieks followed by the sound of air entering a slit throat is borderline for PLEASE STAY. The noise distracts me from the feeling underneath the rage. The tantrum is a form of panic attack. The borderline buries the prohibited feelings of rage and sorrow in shallow graves. The decomposing body of half-eaten grief rises up before my waking eyes.
Girl in Need of a Tourniquet













