
The Buddha and the Borderline

All I know is that my feelings are intolerable, and to me, anything intolerable is wrong.
Kiera Van Gelder • The Buddha and the Borderline
To be in the desolate badlands while envisioning the lush tropics without being totally triggered again isn’t easy, especially when life seems so effortless for everyone else.
Kiera Van Gelder • The Buddha and the Borderline
I can’t count the number of blank journals I’ve bought, or the date books with their numbered pages and little graphs for listing plans, or the self-help books, all with the expectation that this time it will be different.
Kiera Van Gelder • The Buddha and the Borderline
This could be a whole new beginning. Or it could be yet another false start.
Kiera Van Gelder • The Buddha and the Borderline
I don’t understand how I can have so much information in my head and still not be able to change.
Kiera Van Gelder • The Buddha and the Borderline
We’ll begin with my childhood, climb over the demolished landscape of my adolescence, and survey the desolate wasteland of my adulthood, figuring out what to fix as we go.
Kiera Van Gelder • The Buddha and the Borderline
How much of what I feel as neglect has been fueled by the force of my constant need? How much can any person hold another who is perpetually falling?
Kiera Van Gelder • The Buddha and the Borderline
If I want to survive, I have to stop turning my energy against myself—stop being the worker bee, the supplicant always feeling helpless and asking for help, the one who desires, unrequited. I have to transform this despair and anger into power.
Kiera Van Gelder • The Buddha and the Borderline
Poisoned by what’s inside us, and vulnerable to anything outside us.