In The Way She Feels, Courtney Cook shares her greatest vulnerabilities about living with borderline personality disorder. A mental illness that’s not well-understood and difficult to diagnose before the age of 18, Cook realizes how very little awareness there is out there about the reality of living with BPD. Her aim with this graphic memoir is to enlighten minds and give other sufferers a place to turn to for support. Cook takes us back to her younger years when the first signs of BPD began to show. She openly shares her experiences with self-harm and how the habit would bring her relief. She recounts the idolization for people which can quickly turn into burning hatred, the fear of abandonment and the anxiety brought on by the most insignificant things — the blow dryer “because it feels like souls are coming out of it,” the dark “because it makes the air look like flies,” and even paper cuts because she might “bleed to death” — all of these are characteristics of a disorder that leaves the bearer having barely any sense of self.
She talks about the random things that make her cry — the Mars rover Curiosity singing “Happy Birthday” to itself, for example, or because there is “a whale that speaks at no other frequency other whales can hear.” She opens up about being sent to a residential treatment center for at-risk girls, the strict rules upheld at that establishment, the small ways she’s slowly learned to cope with BPD and the long journey to finding the right combination of medication that finally helped her attain some peace of mind.
Through her art, Cook fills the pages of her memoir with creative depictions that help lighten the subject’s weight while simultaneously helping to visually drive the point home. She delves deep into her experiences, pushing past the fear of stigmatization to offer a first-person account of what it’s like to live with BPD. When all the media ever offers are extreme representations like the movie Girl, Interrupted and Kurt Cobain’s life story, Cook steps up and offers the public an honest and more accurate understanding of what it’s like to live with BPD.
What do you do when you’re given everything and still feel empty? The problem is, my wants are intangible, a cosmic longing for something unattainable. I am always reaching for more, but “more” is generally for someone who doesn’t love me to love me back, or for the entire world to think I’m special, or for someone who meets me to fall in love with me. In other words, my “more” can’t exist. My “more” is impossible. My “more” eats away at me from the inside. – excerpt from Courtney Cook’s The Way She Feels
The Way She Feels is a brave unveiling of the reality of borderline personality disorder. It fills the void where the lack of information has previously helped in the ostracization of its bearers. It’s so much more than mislabeling a person as “crazy.” People suffering from BPD are still people at the heart of the disorder. The Way She Feels teaches as well as reaches for our sympathy as those of us on the outside finally begin to understand what BPD really is and what it means to those who live with it.