The way she feels :

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Title :

The way she feels : my life on the borderline in pictures and pieces / Courtney Cook.

Title:

The way she feels :

Author:

Cook, Courtney, 1995-

Format:

Books

Physical Description:

219 pages : chiefly illustrations ; 22 cm

Edition:

First US edition.

ISBN:

9781951142599

Production / Publication Information:

Portland, Oregon : Tin House, 2021.

Summary:

"A witty and one-of-a-kind debut graphic memoir detailing and drawing the life of a girl with borderline personality disorder finding her way-and herself-one day at a time. What does it feel like to fall in love too hard and too fast, to hate yourself in equal and opposite measure? To live in such fear of rejection that you drive friends and lovers away? Welcome to my world. I'm Courtney, and I have borderline personality disorder (BPD), along with over four million other people in the United States. Though I've shown every classic symptom of the disorder since childhood, I wasn't properly diagnosed until nearly a decade later, because the prevailing theory is that most people simply "grow out of it." Not me. In my illustrated memoir The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces, I share what it's been like to live and love with this disorder. Not just the hospitalizations, treatments, and residential therapy, but the moments I found comfort in cereal, the color pink, or mini corn dogs; the days I couldn't style my hair because I thought the blow-dryer was going to hurt me; the peace I found when someone I love held me. This is a book about vulnerability, honesty, acceptance, and how to speak openly-not only with doctors, co-patients, friends, family, or partners, but also with ourselves"--

Language:

English

Genre:

Autobiographical comics.

Personal Subject:

Cook, Courtney, 1995-

Subject Term:

Borderline personality disorder -- United States -- Biography -- Comic books, strips, etc.

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Material Type	Library	Call Number	Item Barcode	Location
Book	Searching... Chelmsford Public Library	GRAPHIC/BIOG/COOK	31480011478895	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Groton Public Library	GN BIO COOK	37003701864549	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Hamilton-Wenham Public Library	A/GN B COOK	30470001940187	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Lawrence Public Library	BIO COO GRAPHIC	31549004881479	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Littleton - Reuben Hoar Library	GN 92 COOK	39965002335809	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Manchester-by-the-Sea Public Library	GRAPHIC NOVEL WAY	32124002039915	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Methuen - Nevins Memorial Library	ADULT GRAPHIC B COOK, C.	31548003432508	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

What does it feel like to fall in love too hard and too fast, to hate yourself in equal and opposite measure? To live in such fear of rejection that you drive friends and lovers away? Welcome to my world. I'm Courtney, and I have borderline personality disorder (BPD), along with over four million other people in the United States. Though I've shown every classic symptom of the disorder since childhood, I wasn't properly diagnosed until nearly a decade later, because the prevailing theory is that most people simply "grow out of it." Not me.

In my illustrated memoir, The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces, I share what it's been like to live and love with this disorder. Not just the hospitalizations, treatments, and residential therapy, but the moments I found comfort in cereal, the color pink, or mini corndogs; the days I couldn't style my hair because I thought the blow-dryer was going to hurt me; the peace I found when someone I love held me. This is a book about vulnerability, honesty, acceptance, and how to speak openly--not only with doctors, co-patients, friends, family, or partners, but also with ourselves.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Cook's candid and formally varied graphic memoir debut examines a central paradox of borderline personality disorder, which she was diagnosed with at 23: the disorder explains the mood swings and fear of abandonment that have haunted her since childhood, proving she's not simply "dramatic"--yet the diagnosis is also characterized by a need for attention. Cook grows up in idyllic Winnetka, Ill., raised in relative privilege with kind parents, but she suspects that neurosurgery in infancy may have contributed to her mental health issues. These she depicts with humor and vulnerability in lists, stories, and bright digital illustrations highlighting her pink hair, phone screen, and abstract word collages. While there's some repetition, it also shows a mind circling the same points. Cook describes her experience at a residential treatment center in contrast to most literary accounts of institutionalization, fondly recalling art therapy and kinship with other troubled teens. Maturity, medication, and continued therapy bring relative peace, but Cook is frank about her ongoing struggles, including skin-picking and idealization of acquaintances. For better or worse, "all my actions and thoughts and emotions are filtered through my borderline brain." Readers will appreciate that same brain's creativity and wit here. (June)

Kirkus Review

Borderline personality disorder explained in 20 candid and endearing illustrated essays. "It makes me sort of sick how easy it is for me to love people." "I call the boy who has broken my heart continually over the past two years. My hands are shaking because I'm scared he won't answer and even more scared that he will." In her debut memoir, 24-year-old Cook delivers dozens of lines that will touch the heart of any tender soul who has dealt with a rough passage through adolescence and young adulthood: the passions, ironies, terrifying self-esteem crises, social drama, and urges toward self-harm. In Cook's case, these psychic states were turned up to the point that she was speculated to have borderline personality disorder at age 13 and was formally diagnosed with BPD at 23. In a typically charming essay called "Ten Months in Europe," a 21st-century update of Susanna Kaysen's classic Girl, Interrupted, Cook describes spending the better part of her 14th year in an art therapy--based treatment center called La Europa, based in a suburb of Salt Lake City. "We were almost normal teenagers," she writes. "Like normality was within reach." Her bright, cleverly annotated, wide-line illustrations are especially apt when depicting digital screens and their content. In the title essay and in one called "Oops, I'm Bleeding Again," Cook details her experiences with scab-picking in nauseating but necessary detail, and she explains how important friends and lovers can be in beginning to defang and move beyond these secretive behaviors. "The relief is instant, palpable," she writes. "I sigh, partly because I'm frustrated I've restarted the healing process yet again, partly because this is my high. I've experimented with coke, Molly, shrooms, acid, drunk an entire fifth of vodka in a night; nothing touches this feeling." In addition to a moving personal story, Cook provides a funny, heartfelt guide to borderline personality disorder and a distillation of adolescent tortures many readers will recognize. A poignant debut from a promising writer and illustrator. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.