Marriage Counseling…..I Don't Get It

Okay, so I don’t get it. We went to the county counseling services for marriage counseling, key word here is marriage. So far, my husband has two one on one sessions with a social worker I think who has matched him up with an older male therapist. So, my husband has another appointment, again one on one, with this new guy. Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought marriage counseling was for couples? I mean, I have my own therapist, but they know what’s wrong with me. I have a list of like 5 different mental illnesses and symptoms of others (but not enough to meet diagnosing criteria), I have a chart at Behavioral Health that is about 2.5 inches thick. They already know I am nuts, so, maybe that’s what they are trying to figure out with my husband ~ to what degree does his insanity go? Is he depressed? What type of depression is it? I think he has OCD and a “soft” version of bipolar personally. But, that’s just me observing his behavior for 3.5 years. I am a sociologist by nature, I observe people, so sue me….. some have tried, but rocks do not bleed. So, maybe they are trying to diagnose him? I can already tell them he is nuts, gonzo bye bye outside……… but I am not a “professional.” I  just happen to have my Bachelor’s in Sociology and Psychology, not to mention I have been in therapy myself for about 8.5 years. You learn stuff ….. But what I cannot figure out is why does he need to do individual counseling before we get counseling together, unless it is to prepare him for the actual therapy with both of us. I already know it is going to be brutal. I have fucking bipolar type I illness that does like to come out and play, usually with disastrous results. I can be brutal and cold when my illness decides to come out and play, or I can be a quivering weeping mess. I do not know if I want to do this or not. but, I do not want a divorce either.


Still don’t understand why we are not being counseled as a couple? I am so confused…..

Dreams

You know haw when sometimes you wake up and you’ve been dreaming about someone or some other time, and you just have to hear a certain song or image that reminds you of them? And the time you have been dreaming about is inevitably a better, happier and simpler time, but you can’t decide if the dram made you happy or sad. That’s how I started my day, I have/had a friend that I loved and still love very deeply, and he introduced me to the Insane Clown Posse (ICP). He also did about half the tattoos on my body. I woke up this morning dreaming the song “Crystal Ball” off the second CD of Bizzar, and it reminds me of one of the last two times I saw him. I had gone to Indiana to visit him after a strange Saturday night phone call about 2 months before, I still do not know why I picked up the phone that night. I think it was because it was long distance and the Caller ID said it was from a tattoo shop. Oh, yeah, this was summer 1990. I am thinking, someone really dialed a wrong number. So, I pick up the phone, “Hello?” I hear a voice on the other end that says “Hi, it’s your evil twin.” I had to sit down, thank god there was a chair nearby, I was hearing a voice I never thought I would hear ever again. He re-introduced himself. And I said I knew who it was from the very first “Hi!” We talked every night for two months, even calling each other at midnight on June 11/12th because his birthday is exactly 12 hours after mine. Hew was my mountain biking partner, my best friend, and a whole lot more. 

I think the dream has made me sad. I do not think this is one of those happy nostalgia dreams. I feel nothing but extreme yearning for a much simpler time when everything was golden sunshine whether it was raining or not.

I Found My Soulmate Once

I found my soul mate once. Only once, and I miss him. He was/is perfect for me. We were/are two of a kind. Too bad we are both married. To the wrong people. You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you get what you need. I do not need what I got. I need him.

Jimi Hendrix ~ Little Wing

Ocean Size ~ Jane's Addiciton

“I was made with a heart of stone, to be broken with one hard blow….” Jane’s Addiction Ocean Size

Marriage Counseling Part Two

Okay, so yesterday in the midst of a gigantic panic attack, I mustered up the wherewithall to go with my husband to the counseling services center that is run by the count we live in. I was all geared (and medicated) up and ready to tackle this marriage problem thing, because despite his flaws and my own, we really do love each other. We get there, and I tell the lady at the front desk that we needed marriage counseling which is really embarrassing to admit, but admit it, I did. With witnesses. So, she goes into this song and dance about how one of us gets counseling first, and then the counselor decides when to bring the partner in. I have my own therapist, so it is my husband who is getting the individual counseling. None of this makes sense to me. We went for marriage counseling, not one on one counseling. I wasted a good panic attack on nothing.

Marriage Counseling

Today my husband and I are supposed to go get signed up with the local counseling services in an attempt to save a failing marriage,  although we are talking again. That’s a good sign. There’s was a period of about 1.5 weeks where we did not utter a word to one another. That’s never a good sign that any relationship is healthy. While I agree that we do need help, I have heard that marriage counseling can be really rough. I have enough emotional problems for three people so I wonder how well I am going to weather this. I am extremely apprehensive about this endeavor. I do not know if I am strong enough to hear all the things about me that bug him, all the areas where I am deficient or lacking, all the things I do wrong. I do not need to pay a therapist to know that I am a fucked up wife. But, he’s no prize either. He spends hours glued to his computer, he forgets to eat because he spends so much time there, off in cyber space, that he loses time. I guess its time to air the dirty laundry….

Daylight Saving's Time as A Concept. Period.

As a bipolar person whose life is regimented in an attempt to manage the disorder, I am firmly against day light saving time. All it does for me is disrupt my sleeping patterns for about 2 weeks. Although I can appreciate the idea of having extra daylight hours in the summer evenings, and more hours of sunlight in the winter mornings, I do not appreciate its effects on my circadian rhythm’s. I wake up, and the clock says one thing, and my brain and body say that what I am seeing is absolutely not true. It is not 8:00 am, it is 7:00 am as far as I am concerned. I go to sleep at 11:00 pm, my brain and body say, no, it is not. It is only 10:00 pm…… and this goes on for about a week.  I do not know if this happens to other manic depressives, but it renders me confused and tired. My body says one thing and the clock says another, and I just so not like those types of mental discrepancies. I even forgot to take my pill… Take the red pill, take the blue pill, take the red pill, and I’ll show you how deep the Rabbit Hole goes..

The Colder Black

I have not found the warmth of the clear blue day. The beautiful golden yellow that used to color my life and my days seems gone, never to return. The excitement of wanting to know what is next, the thrill of finding out what is coming. The anticipation that used to accompany my waking every morning. No, I do not live there anymore. Now, I live in the colder black where everything is a challenge, every statement an opening for an argument, every sideways glance a patois of what was and what shall never be again.  A place where every decision is carefully thought out to cause the least damage, where every syllable I speak has to be analyzed for content before it is uttered. The colder black consumes. It does not foster growth. It is a cancer of the soul that just eats and eats away at you until you have become a shell of what you once were. Oddly enough, the colder black does seem to have one redeeming quality: you have to get out of it before it kills you, so you write. You write your pain, your frustration at what is, your belief that it will never again be what it was. You write because you have to. You write to keep one foot ahead of the colder black.  You remember those dreams you had as child where you were terrified and being chased by something you could not see, but could hear stumbling through the brush, coming for you. It was close enough at all times to be able to feel the cold, evil presence. That is part of the colder black only now you feel its dark, evil presence around you at all times even while awake. You live with the colder black. It does not subside upon waking; it merely crawls into a part of your brain where you can feel it eating and consuming you from the inside out. The colder black makes you question everything you have done, said, or been in your life. Have you been a good person or have you been the person who brings pain to others? Have you said enough to the people in your life that they know you care about them, or have you kept quiet and let them assume that you do? Are you someone else’s version of the colder black that gnaws away at them like a cancer, and makes of them a shell? It makes you question who you are; it questions who you are for you. It does not like to wait for answers. It wants to know now; are you or are you not the person that you think you are? And the answer is quite simple: You are not the person you think you are or the person that others think you are. You are a creation of the colder black. But, you hide this from people; that you are cancerous. They only find out later when it is too late that you consume everything in sight. Every emotion, every piece of another person. You feed on them. They are the sustenance of the colder black. It does not want light and sunshine, it creeps and hides in the dark recesses of your mind, just waiting for the chance to feed again. And, if it is not fed, you will help it to feed because you have no choice; it is you. The colder black does not want you to feel good about yourself, it does not want you to be confident, it does not want you to feel love or happiness, it does not want you to love in return, it does not want anything good for you. It wants you to be miserable, depressed, angry, confused and hurt because this is the source of its food. The pain, the aggravation, the difficulty, the misery, the hurt, the anger, the irritation, all of this feeds the colder black, and it is a hard taskmaster. Once you have begun to inhabit the space of the colder black, it is very hard to find the golden, yellow warmth. It has been obscured by the bleakness created by the tumour that is the colder black. It does not want you to find even a shred of the golden yellow warmth. Then, you aren’t paying attention to it. It needs attention to thrive. It demands it. Once you’ve inhabited the colder black, everything becomes gray, everything loses some or all of its joy. Everything that you once found so comforting becomes a source of pain, of hurt, of confusion, of ending rather than beginning or continuing. Once you have been consumed by the colder black, the fight to find the golden yellow warmth seems almost futile.  Your relationships are consumed, your personality is consumed, your friends and family are consumed. It is an equal opportunity bottom feeder. It renders you colorless. It feeds on any little bit of joy you may have carved out of the day, it grows stronger if it can get you to feed on another person’s soul. It is insidious and pernicious. Once you have been consumed, it is almost impossible to find your way back. It won’t let you. 

I Have Bipolar Disorder, He Does Not

I am not sure how to begin this post. I have Bipolar Disorder, and he does not. I do not know how much of what I do and/or say comes from the illness, and how much is me. They get wound together sometimes. All I do know is that about 4 days ago, I told him I was not happy in this relationship, that he took more care with his plants than he did with me, and that I needed someone who was going to love me for who and what I was. I said the plants get more attention than I do. It is not like I need to be hovered over, but a confirmation that I am indeed loved and wanted would be nice. A good morning, a spontaneous kiss, holding hands in public, that kind of thing. When we go anywhere together, he keeps his distance from me, and that confuses me. Does he love me truly, or only in private? Anyway, I gave him two options: we could look into how much it would cost to get counseling, or we could get a divorce. Now, I do not want a divorce. I love him. Which is where the bipolar thing comes in. I do not know how much of what I feel is a direct effect of the illness, and how much of it is the core personality. I am pretty sure the feelings of being unhappy in the relationship come from the core part of my emotional being. However, things like I did on December 1st of 2011, definitely came from the bipolar side of me. I tried like all hell to kick him out of the house, and I am worried if he loves me? I wouldn’t love me if that’s the kind of behavior I had to put up with. I would be concerned (I am on the other side of the fence now) with whether my wife loved me. Especially when so much of this comes out of the blue.  I fear that this time, I have hurt him very badly. He won’t talk to me. He won’t look at me. He hides from me. I do not blame him. If I had been told as many times as he has that I wanted out, I would start to believe it. The things I said were hurtful, and mean. Maybe I just wanted him to feel as unwanted and unloved as I feel. But, that’s not an appropriate thing to want to do to someone you love. I do it a lot. Too much. And too often. One of these days he is going to leave me just like everyone else has because I cannot control my anger, my temper or my emotions. And, I have always taken it out on the ones I love the most that actually love me back. But, I have these voices/thoughts that creep into my head that I am too damaged, too ill, not good enough, not pretty enough, not sexy enough to be loved by another person. So, I dump all of this into my loved one’s laps, and then expect them to not be hurt. How could I possibly expect them not to be hurt? If I were in their shoes, I would be terribly hurt and pissed off and depressed. I would begin to seriously rethink my relationship with me. What I do and say is not fair to anyone on the receiving end. I am sorry.  I seriously think about whether I should be in a relationship, or if it is better for all involved for me to be alone. I obviously do not live well with others. I need more attention than is realistic (maybe that’s a father issue). I do not feel loved. I have only once in my entire life, and that was an old biker that I am friends with. I told him I loved him, and he replied that he had loved me for a long time. And, I believed him because he did not say things he did not mean and put careful thought into. He only had to tell me once, and I knew he did. It isn’t like that this time around. He never tells me he loves me. He just gets hurt when I tell him I want to leave. That is my only sign that he does love me. If he didn’t, he would not be hurt. That’s pretty fucked up of me to have to hurt him so badly just to prove he loves me. Most of the time when I am wanting out, it is because I would rather be alone by myself than with someone around. I wouldn’t want me if I were him. I have abused him just like I have everyone else unfortunate enough to land in my sphere. I’d get the hell out before I really cause a problem.