What if BPD actually stands for British Period Drama?
I texted the above question to my roommate the other day from the lobby of my campus counseling center.
I was sitting in a small room full of chairs, filling out a litany of different surveys and questionnaires on a loaner iPad. I was sitting in a small and windowless room in which I may or may not have sat before.
I had definitely been to the counseling center, about four years prior, in a moment of acute crisis, but I wasn’t sure if it had moved or not. While the lobby felt sort of familiar layout-wise, I was fairly sure it was a different room, and possibly a different building altogether. The front desk was now about three feet to the right of where it had been, and completely encased in what looked to be bulletproof glass. You had to slide an iPad through one of those little tiny windows like the ones at the bank, which is harder than it looks. The wall art was definitely different: they replaced (thank god) the Mondrian-esque abstract painting, whose primary color palette had once been — I remember it vividly — like adderall for my eyes, with some cute little amateurish drawings about feelings, which I can only imagine were the work of some of the patients. Around me were clipboards with coloring pages on them, where you could color in the word “Breathe.”
The survey questions were surprisingly comprehensive, asking, for example, if I was monogamous, polyamorous, etc. They also included a thoughtful definition of transgender, and asked if I was that. It was nice to answer them on the iPad instead of the old desktops they used to have, where it felt like someone could look over your shoulder. These very nice questions lulled me into a strange sense of comfort, so even though I was there for a simple routine referral, I decided to answer with some degree of honesty.
As I sat there in the lobby, I became aware of the conspicuous background music. It was exactly the kind of melancholic yet uplifting orchestral music I associate with a British period drama. As the violins grew more frantic (yet somehow also more soothing), I imagined Kiera Knightley, skirts akimbo, running through a lilacked field, clavicle heaving above her delicately ruffled neckline. At the other end of the field from Keira Knightley’s clavicle is Colin Firth’s knitted brow, a brow that simultaneously expresses consternation, desire, and the dim yet growing awareness of the loss and chaos that constitutes the center of any (but especially his) seemingly ordered way of life. Colin is, in true Colin fashion, sitting atop a horse, and he’s uniformed. A scullery-maid stops her work momentarily to watch the exchange between Colin and Kiera, and clucks knowingly at another, younger scullery maid, who, in turn, giggles, her smile briefly lighting up the drabness of a mien long-bedimmed by a life of wearing one of those boring little caps worn by the poor. We notice that she’s very pretty. But she’s just some anonymous Brit from Central Casting, and Keira Knightley is, well, Keira Knightley. This movie will never be about the scullery-maid, and we all need to accept that, so the camera quickly breaks us from our momentary distraction and brings us back to the only clavicle that we need to care about — the one currently heaving its way across a field.
Of course, the scene need not be the climax in order to be musically epic. It could be, simply, Keira putting on her dress (or rather, having it put on by servants); it could be her father sitting at his desk, gingerly shuffling papers. No matter where we go, so, too, go the violins.
I know almost nothing, in a technical sense, about the music from British period dramas, but I do know that its formally very much its own thing, and that, both formally and emotionally, it is very much is a lot of things at once. Texturally, its many layers of instrumentation work together to build the illusion of an entire, evidently harmonious world: a world of country houses and marriages both felicitous and infelicitous; a world that turns according to its own strange set of magical rules and customs, most of which have to do with maintaining the ultimately fragile class division that I’ve just intimated in my shot-by-shot analysis of this imaginary movie. And what better to convey tenuous harmony than the persistent sawing of a thousand violins?
The therapist on duty (Dr. Ehlerman? Dr. Einehan? Who knows?) disrupted my reverie to call me into my office. His degrees, I noticed as I entered his office, were all from some college that was either Christian or maybe Mormon. I was picking up on very precise details, but doing so in a very vague way. I immediately launched in to my spiel about what I was there for — what paperwork I needed and where I needed it sent, and why I needed, as a person in multiple partnerships, to see multiple couples therapists. He stopped me.
“I read your surveys,” he said. “And as I’m sure you know, we’re required by law to ask you about your suicidal thoughts.” He paused. “You seem to have indicated in the surveys that you both are and aren’t suicidal.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes. Here on this first survey, you said you were not currently suicidal. But on the third survey, when it asked if you regularly think about suicide, you marked it as a ‘2’”. That is, a 2 out of 5. So we have some concerns about that.
I ask, dear reader, how would YOU answer such a question with a number between 1 and 5?
I went on to explain to Dr. Ehhnehennen that its not that I’m considering or planning suicide — I just don’t NOT think about it. That is, as someone with BPD, those thoughts are just part of the texture of my daily life. They are very normal, and until recently, I was under the impression that everyone had them. Maybe the thoughts (and they are most often thoughts, not desires) stem from reading too much Sartre in college, or from reading too much of the news and pondering the slow, collective suicide that is climate change. None of this means that my life is in any way at risk (aside from, you know, climate change).
When I told him about my BPD, he not only immediately understood what I meant when I talked about suicidal thoughts, but he regarded me with just a small touch of awe. I began to feel, sitting there on his grey vinyl loveseat, like a modern psychiatric miracle. Queer, nonbinary, polyamorous, Ph.D student, seeing not one but three therapists, chronically ill, mentally ill — how are you even alive? he seemed to be wondering. Perhaps this was my projection, and it was really just me, taking stock of the full situation and asking this question of my own tired-ass self. But I did see his eyes open a little wider, and when I let myself out into the hallway, he very genuinely thanked me for coming in, as if I was a minor celebrity.
(Incidentally, I feel the same way with the couples therapist. She took us on even though she was totally booked because, according to her, nobody else was equipped to handle us. She spends most of our sessions with her eyebrows halfway to the ceiling, occasionally emitting a very long, drawn out, “Okaaaaaay.”)
And, you know what? Its not a bad thing to feel impressed with myself for being alive and walking around and living a life — or to feel that the various professionals with whom I interact also find that impressive. Its a goddamn accomplishment. For many, dare I say most, of us, it’s an accomplishment. So let’s bask for a moment in that glow.
What if, I wondered to myself as I left the counseling center, BPD did stand for British Period Drama? And, if British Period Drama were my diagnosis, what would that mean?
I don’t imagine that things would be much different. Its something about the violins — about not knowing exactly what you are feeling, but only knowing that its overwhelming. Its about the heaving clavicle, the body acting out, of its own accord, that which it can’t speak. Its about the unbearable layers of sound that I imagine to others might be just nice. I’m not really sure what that just-niceness feels like, and, I’m pretty sure, neither do Keira or Colin.
My favorite sound in an actually existing British Period Drama happens somewhere during Emma (starring Gwyneth). Bear with me, because I haven’t seen this movie in like 8 years, and when I googled “Gwyneth Paltrow Emma Chickens Scene” I only found Gwyneth’s recipe for enchiladas. But at some point in the movie, there’s a ball going on, and, for seemingly no reason at all (nobody comments on it; I don’t think it has any impact on the plot) the camera cuts to the chicken coop outside, where the chickens are all freaking out. I don’t even think its clear what’s happening , although I’m pretty sure, if I remember correctly from the book, its a chicken thief. And so, mixed with the ball music and the happy laughter in the background, we hear the clucking and screeching of a lot of disturbed hens.
Is anything ever just nice? I like knowing that even in Jane Austen’s sedate little composed world, to which so many people turn for its calming sense of order, nothing is ever just one thing at once.
