She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [36]
In the end, she professed her love, saying: “I am hurting so much that I seem to screw everything up. I really do want to get help… Whatever you want to do to me, I’ll accept it.” She closed by writing that she and Kristina would be staying at the Harvey Hotel, and signed the letter, “I love you—Celeste.”
As she had when Harald and Jimmy threatened divorce, Celeste then held out the promise that she could change. Maintaining that she wanted to stop feeling and acting the way she had been, she checked herself into a psychiatric hospital. There, for perhaps the first time, she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder,
One of the most controversial of diagnoses, BPD describes a cluster of personality traits often tied to early trauma. Some experts believe that from birth, borderlines have biological tendencies to overreact to stress. Their emotions are volatile and violent, plunging from despair to euphoria. Even small slights become gaping emotional wounds. Without filters to keep them from fulfilling every desire, borderlines binge on food, sex, gambling, or compulsive shopping. They self-mutilate or threaten suicide, often using such threats to control others. They fear being alone, even for short periods, and experience anxiety at any sign of being abandoned. Borderlines push people away, then panic when they leave.
Often bright and witty, fun to be around, borderlines are the life of the party. Yet for those who love them, the road is a hard one. They breed chaos and judge people without context, based not on an entire relationship but solely the most recent interaction. Years of devotion can be ignored for the slight of one unkind look. All the while, borderline personalities search for a rescuer, someone to save them from the disarray they create.
Steve was a bright man, one who’d lived long enough to learn when to be skeptical, and, at least initially, he didn’t accept Celeste’s excuses. On June 25 she was discharged from the hospital. Four days later he filed for a divorce.
His marriage crumbling, Steve told few about the impending divorce. Lifelong lessons are hard to ignore, and he was a reflection of his time, when such matters were not discussed. Perhaps he was embarrassed, fearing his friends and family thought him an old fool for marrying Celeste. To him, a divorce would prove them right.
Finally, in August, like the husbands before him, Steve took Celeste back. What convinced him would remain a mystery, but he told one friend that everyone deserved a second chance and that, with the difficult life she’d lived, he understood that Celeste would make mistakes. By then he’d recovered Elise’s precious things from a pawnshop. “Money is just money,” he said.
Soon after, Kristina and Celeste moved back into the house on Terrace Mountain Drive, and Steve paid off her debts— including the $20,000 restitution for the insurance fraud. On August 29, 1995, he withdrew his petition for divorce.
“Maybe it was just that Steve knew what it was like before Celeste, when he was lonely,” says a friend. “And by then he was in love not just with Celeste, but Kristina. Losing Celeste meant losing her as a daughter.” That fall, Kristina moved a step closer to becoming Steve’s child, when he agreed to have her name legally changed to Beard.
Later, it would seem Celeste learned from Steve’s threats of divorce. She’d nearly lost everything: her beautiful home and access to his millions. After living a life of wealth, how could she be forced back to her old life? It must have seemed impossible. From that point on, divorce was Celeste’s enemy. She’d forestalled losing Steve and his millions, but did she wonder how long she could hold him? Later, it would seem she had a motive: manipulating him into giving her a greater claim to his wealth.
“We need to get Steve to sell the house,” Celeste told Kristina. “If he dies, the kids get it. If he builds