We’ll stay inside ’til somebody finds us, do whatever the TV tells us.

Borderline personality disorder has a pattern of reckless behavior, & I say that both to personify the illness (thus removing it from myself, saying “I am not this, I am I”) & to preface the following statement:

I have a DUI.

About 2 months ago, I was carpooling to & from Loveland, where I went to live when all my Denver options ran out (& even w/ full knowledge that I would be welcomed by my last partner if I asked to go back to live in Centennial w/ him). Loveland because there was someone there I was considering rooming w/ when I found an apartment anyway, & 1 night we met in Denver, he’d had a few, I had 1, drove the hour back to his town, & then last-minute decided to go out for a couple more drinks. Then, a friend of ours – the bartender – said she was closing shop early, & would we like to go have a beer w/ her? To which he was all, “Eh,” & I was all, “Sure!”

I like to drink guys.

I don’t like counting the calories in beer, or pounding water to save myself from a wine-headache, but I LOVE feeling funny. & on this particular night, I had already thrown self-control to the winds, was really enjoying all of those people, & I didn’t feel I’d reached near my limit.

So by 2 AM, he had had more than I & was certainly not equipped to drive. Me? I felt fine. When I drink, I get increasingly articulate, so it’s hard to know if I’m actually uncoordinated when I’m not stumbling over words like other drinkers do. We’d taken my car, so I got in & started to navigate back to his place, but did not use my GPS. I typically do use it, even just to go a few miles, but he’d pointed out in the past that that would rot my brain so in all unbridled confidence I started driving, missed a turn, got turned around in a Walgreens parking lot, & then hooked a left onto the street that would’ve taken me back to the turn I missed.

The street I hooked left onto was a 1 way. A car coming the opposite direction (y’know, the right direction) started moving. By the time they got their cruiser behind me, I had already recognized my mistake & turned onto another street, & pulled over, because I also recognized that sleek design in the rearview mirror (I, after all, drive a police cruiser as well) & awaited fearful fffaaattteee.

Turning the wrong way onto a 1 way is a notorious, deathly habit I have in any new city, & it doesn’t matter if it is day or night if the roads are empty. I use the GPS to save me from myself. It’s  not that I don’t have any regard for traffic laws or that I cannot read signs; it’s more the fact that I turn into a nervous wreck in front of other people, have trouble focusing on any present situation when I have an impending future 1, & get in my head when I drive – to a point that I am already too nervous or happy or relieved to be WHEREVER I’m going than to focus on actually getting wherever I’m going.

In addition to these malformations in my ability to synthesize reality, I am a compulsive truth-teller. I know cognitively that it is always safer to never ever lie, because then I don’t have to worry about going backward in time to synthesize the truth w/ bullshit. Any time that I have lied since I have been an adult, short of “We don’t have any organic eggs left,” @ work when we’re about to close, I panic & binge-eat & go find the person & tell them the truth & then KEEP PANICKING & feeling guilty & just generally lying isn’t good to me or to others. In this following instance, maybe honesty was reckless behavior. Maybe all my lovable maelstrom & everything I do wrong comes from the feeling of thinking I’ve done wrong already.

So I said I’d had drinks. I was asked out of my car. I was asked how many fingers, to follow the flashlight in her hands, to stand on 1 foot for as long as I could, then to walk a straight line putting 1 foot directly in front of the other & that I couldn’t do. All other tasks she admits in the report, I performed. But that straight-line-1-foot-after-another was a doozy. They took me in, breathalyzed me – 1st time I blew under the legal limit, 2nd time, over. All the while, the officers were rooting for me – they liked me, I seemed to have it together, I must not be drunk. They released me to a sober driver w/ a court date in hand.

On Thursday, I had a phone hearing w/ the DMV – they revoked my license. My physical court hearing is next week. I will be levied a huge fine, I have already called a company to set up an Ignition Interlock Device after my monthlong driving restriction is ended, & then if for 4 months I can blow zero BAC into that apparatus, it’ll all be over (save this being on my criminal record).

Modest Mouse has some appropriate lyrics for this: “Outta gas. Outta road. Outta car; I don’t know how I’m gonna go. I had a drink the other day, opinions were like kittens; I was givin’ ’em away. I had a drink the other day, I had a lot to say & I said: ‘You will come down soon too, you will come down too soon.'”

Not being able to drive is tantamount to imprisonment, for me. I moved into my car years ago & have never felt safe w/o it since. It’s my home. It’s my freedom. If I can’t run away, as is my best-practiced & least-encouraged habit, then I am not free & I am not myself.

I used the Lyft app to buy a bus pass & get to work Friday. A pass, not planning to use cash, because I was really freaked out about knowing how much bus fare would be or how to interact w/ the bus operator w/o embarrassing myself, & I figured having a teeny recognizable slip of paper would make the whole interaction practically nonexistent. Sitting in a stranger’s car, though, making small talk, apologizing for my weight in their seat, giving faulty directions where I wanted to go; I just deeply, deeply desired to drive myself. I wanted to fly under the radar. Sitting conspicuously in a stranger’s passenger seat, I felt like I was 1 loud bleating blip on the tracker.

I am always so afraid to ask for help or ask questions. Then I am dissociating, or if a situation of any sort is new to me. I missed the bus after work Friday night. I cried. I thought about ice cream. I texted my beau about how frustrated I was, & he was near enough to pick me up & take me home & listen to my teeming self-hatred.

But, today I didn’t miss the bus home from work. Because borderline personality disorder has a pattern of reckless behavior, & I think I’m ready to get all my shit together. Like, don’t drive my car for a month. Like, don’t blow a BAC of anything into that car once it’s equipped w/ an expensive tribunal tribute to my impulsivity. Like, accept love & stop running from it.