A lot of the "personal-experience"-style nodage here tends to focus on the superficial effects of BPD, namely wild mood swings, illogical emotional responses, neediness, etc. And in case the point wasn't immediately obvious, a healthy dollop of cliche is loaded on to drive it home (roller-coaster ride, crazed Icarus, what have you). But I'm going to try to illustrate how these things happen, and why, from an intensely personal viewpoint borne by much experience. The primary culprit to most of the…

First Communion: the girls of St. Michael's Parish have been decked out in their little white dresses and veils. The boys look like miniature grooms. At the critical moment, little Karen Spages, a favourite of Father Tom's, cannot be found.

Mother Superior smells something burning in the rectory. The killer has set the girl's body on fire. Religious statues bear mute witness. Her crucifix, a very special gift from the Parish priest, cannot be found.

Alice,…

Anything that I could say about culture and adolescence in Israel wouldn't be nearly enough. There aren't enough words in English, Hebrew or any other language to describe what it was like.

The high school was religious, and catered towards girls with learning disabilities as well as those whose first language was not Hebrew. To my mother that seemed like the perfect school, especially since it was the only religious school in Jerusalem with those specialties.

Years later my…

That socialist anthem, The Red Flag, was written by an Irishman named Jim Connell in 1889. Inspired by the London dock strike of that year, Connell intended that his lyrics should be sung to the tune of an old Jacobite anthem, the White Cockade, although in Britain they are generally sung to the tune of O Tannenbaum, otherwise known to the rest of the English speaking world as O Christmas Tree. Nevertheless, with its references to our "martyred dead" whose "life-b…