This article contains spoilers for the play "Hedwig and the Angry Inch."
I have never not been fucked up. I can’t remember being the happy child that my parents claim I was; I only remember endless years of despair, anger, and ennui. I am 34 years old, and I have never been truly happy. I spent almost half my life starving myself to death and I have been in therapy on and off since I was 14 years old. I have a slew of diagnoses, and I am always trying to make sense of them, hoping in turn to make sense of myself.
I live my life through television, movies, music and books. I mean, I have a real life too—I work, I write, I go out sometimes, but I find reflections of myself in, say, a book excerpt, or a lyric, they resonate with me, and I can’t stop thinking about them. They become part of me, as if I came up with them myself, and they become important to me, because they give me a way to explain how I feel when my own brain falls short.
There is a scene in "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" that sums up, in a way, part of my diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" is a musical about Hedwig, a genderqueer from Germany who comes to America after a botched sex change operation, teaches a teenager her music, and falls in love. That teenager (Tommy Gnosis is his stage name) steals her music and abandons her when he learns she is not biologically female. Anyway, I am terrible at summing stuff up—just watch the movie because it is really good. I have never seen the play because I am perpetually poor and have always missed out on it, which sucks.
After a lengthy stalking spree, Hedwig and Tommy get drunk while driving around, listening to the songs Hedwig wrote that made him famous. One of the songs, “Origin of Love,” has a lyric that goes like this: “And Osiris and the gods of the Nile/Gathered up a big storm," but Tommy sings it: “The Cyrus and the gods of the Nile," which infuriates Hedwig, because it means so much to her and he “fucked it up."
This has been a very boring set up for the explanation as to why this scene strikes me so much. I relate to it because something was important to her, so important, and it wasn’t as important to another person. A person she loved and probably still loves. Volatile interpersonal relationships are part of BPD, and I am often enraged when something does not hold the same weight with a friend or loved one as it does with me. “Don’t you remember,” I will say, “We were listening to that song when you first held my hand?” They will not remember and I will be infuriated or depressed that these small details that mean nothing to anyone else, but me.
Even in writing this, I was stuck for an example, and turned to a loved one for help:
Me: Do you have [an example]?
Him: Like a personal anecdote?
Me: I mean with me.
Him: Well we both have our differences with [the piano coda in] Layla, but I’m not sure that’s ever upset either of us.
Me: That's not what I mean!
I even get upset that people can’t recall times when I was upset, I guess.
I hate being like this. I don’t know why I am hyper-focused on minutiae that means nothing to anyone, but myself, or why I am so angry when things do not have the same special meaning to someone else as they do to me. I cannot break this cycle, try as I might. I have always been like this. It is very difficult to explain any sort of mental illness to people who do not suffer from it, but BPD is a nightmare disorder that alienates and angers most. When I bring up this particular "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" scene, people begin to understand what I am talking about, and for that I am thankful.
