The 76 illustrated pages of this graphic novel allow us to understand this disorder that is the limit state or borderline, which is mainly characterized by instability of emotions, internal insecurity and attitudes of constant testing of the environment. A difficult subject, which has only very rarely been treated in comics.
“Borderline: diary of my life before”is the title of the comic strip created by Frédérique Cretin, alias “Fé”. In an article published on the France 3 Bourgogne Franche Comté website, we learn more regarding this Bisontine author, French teacher in a small school in Haute-Saône. Frédérique is a dynamic, smiling almost fifty-year-old. “People around me generally don’t believe me. Even my girlfriend finally didn’t believe me. When she saw that ridiculous situations made me anxious… that she had examples, then she began to understand… No, people tell themselves that I’m fragile. But it doesn’t matter, I’m used to it. But it doesn’t show any more than that. I have a normal head, things are going well at work…” she explains.
“Everything affects me. Everything affects me far too much, in a somewhat disproportionate way. I’m excessive, all the time” details Fe. She had never heard of the disorder before being diagnosed in 2004.
Fé started drawing in his notebooks one day when things were not going well. At the time, such days were many. Little by little, she created characters and began to tell her life story, because it made her feel good. And then one day, she stopped and left her notebooks in a corner… Twenty years passed and life gave her the chance to meet the author Émilie Plateau to whom she dared to show her work. What was just an escape has become an object now available to everyone.
• “Borderline: diary of my life before”, 19 euros, June 2022, edition The cabin on the dog.
