We’re falling through the air, as one. Will, Will Junior, me and Oli.
No, not falling, we’re flying.
“You’ve done well Adam. You’ve stepped up and taken control. I’m proud of you.”
52 year-old Adam Waters is going through a rough patch. His internet-based business of selling corporate conferences is tenuous, he drinks too much and is borderline diabetic. It’s not the life he deserves. He’s a free spirit.
When the woman he meets online tells his girlfriend he’s been cheating on her, it’s the final straw.
There’s a fine line between trauma, narcissism, sociopathy and murder.
Chapter One (‘AMY’) was shortlisted for the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival Literary Awards as a standalone short story.
But the tale had barely begun…..
“If the eyes are the window to the soul, then the mind is surely the portal to madness. Borderline Normality by Lauren Lloyd is testimony to human emotions. Beautifully written, powerful, thought provoking and terrifying. How far can an individual go in the pursuit of self-gratification? I know these people, I live amongst them, I share some of their characteristics and am equally bewitched by them and afraid of being them.”
A Borderline Amuse Bouche
We need to play more with writing. Play radically. Communicate creatively. For that is how we influence change. When women push at the margins, we influence change.
I once said if I was going to be a super-hero, I’d be the wonderful anti-hero Harley Quinn. Harley Quinn (the inimitable Margot Robbie in The Suicide Squad) completely rejects conventional patriarchal superhero tropes. She’s colourful, renegade, eccentric, brutal, messy, deliciously horny and utterly delightful.
PLAY is the way to change the world, from the inside-out. We all need to make time to do it, and do it radically, creatively, joyously.
Lots of us have ‘Borderline’ traits: Fear of abandonment; rage; sorrow; shame; terror. Intense, unstable emotion and angst. To send 400 messages to a partner, firing one after the other, fearing rejection over something tiny.
75% of those diagnosed with Borderline ‘Personality Disorder’ are women.
I welcome the debate on the reasons for that and a compassionate, trauma-informed understanding for those who live with the crippling distress.
Likewise, we all have the propensity for narcissistic behaviour: taking advantage of others; a lack of empathy or responsibility; entitlement rooted in an all-consuming, soul-destroying fear of being discovered for who we really are. A pathological fear of vulnerability.
Like Icarus to the sun, the one is attracted to the other.
Trauma is written into our DNA and we play it out time and time again until it reaches resolution.
I asked a learned friend and psychotherapist whether the profiles in Borderline were authentic.
“Absolutely,” he said, “Rachel’s an air-head. Adam’s a complete….. (insert blunt Glasgow-ism here) and I hope Amy finds peace.”
I love them and understand them all. Every breath. They lived on my shoulder for several years. They are part of me.
I hope you enjoy the book and can’t put it down until it speeds to its final descent.
To everyone who picks up my books, thank you for giving my words a chance.
Borderline Normality is dedicated to my Ayrshire and Glasgow Book Group Friends. May you all see a little of yourselves, your colleagues, your ex’s, your lovers in these chapters.
Let the discourse be as glorious as the Alton Inn cocktails we sup alongside our tales.
BORDERLINE NORMALITY IS ON ITS WAY……
Lauren Lloyd 