I’m reading this story in the New York Times right now about a member of the Carnegie family who lives on a tiny, isolated, most likely wind-swept island up in Maine and wrote a book about her family’s history of mental illness. Her daughter, pseudonym Sandra, now 55, first diagnosed with schizophrenia and then with BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) also lives on the island. Excerpt:
[The author of the book] discovered Jungian analysis and Transcendental Meditation and stopped speaking to her own father, though he lived, until his death, in a house within view of hers. He was, she has come to believe, as ill in his own way as Lucy, who was as ill as Sandra. In time, Sandra married, had two children and then divorced. Now 55, she has a house on Crescent Island, and the company of a companion hired by her parents.
The person I’m MOST interested in, based upon this excerpt, is the paid companion. What is that like? Do they just hang out, or is her BPD so bad Sandra needs to be taken care of? What kind of melancholy does she (I’m assuming it’s a female) face on those chilly New England island nights?
