Marriage Counseling Round 2

Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night. Oil on canvas, 73×92 cm, 28¾×36¼ in. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

So, here we go again. Another fateful trip on the counseling merry-go-round. I really hope that the Psychologist is bright enough to cut through the husband’s bullshit. He keeps telling the doctor that I was at an all time low when he met me. He makes it sound like he gave me a life that was not unfulfilling and dull.

 

I liked my life. I was up at 4 or 5 am, and by 8 am, I was on my bike, heading somewhere for two or three hours. I rode with a close friend (and his brother or nephew, sometimes) every Sunday morning. We’re talking 40 mile treks through the urban jungle complete with smoke belching dragons (aka cars). In the summer, after I got back from riding I would rinse off and go hang out by the pool at the apartments. I’d talk to people, some of us became friends. I dated, I went out with friends. But, somehow the egocentrism he is accusing me of (you only care about your illness, ummmmmm, correct me if I am wrong, but shouldn’t I be somewhat concerned about it, you only care about your cat, well, maybe if you hadn’t made me kill the other two, I wouldn‘t have such a clingy cat;the others were her brother, and surrogate mom, and the last thing I care about is myself).

 

Maybe if he were more affectionate and supportive instead of being “constructively” critical the majority of the time, I wouldn’t feel the need to be so vigilant about my own well-being. I would know someone was there to help me if I fell. He is not about that. I have to pick myself up and he calls it being egotistical. Maybe if he would actually bother to learn something scientifically researched and published by M.D.’s, P.hD’s, people who have spent their lives researching and treating Bipolar people, and not just relying on some rather unfortunate experiences he had with one who also was Boderline (bad combo), and one who promised him that she had it under control What a fallacy! Bipolar is never “under control”; it is managed with proper medication, seeing a therapist as often as needed and making regular appointments with you psychiatrist. 

 

I told him when I found out what the one woman had told him that I was offering him no guarantees. My bipolar was managed, but that I would never promise that it was under control. And, I was right. I went through episodes of depression, mania, depression and mania, and outright violent moods. I just wish he would educate himself because that would take so much pressure off of me to be “normal” all the time. I can’t cry because that is showing weakness. I cannot be angry, happy, sad, joyous, any emotion because it isn’t “real”. It is the illness. It really does seem to me that that is the way he sees me: as nothing more than a mentally ill person who always needs help, and can’t see herself any other way. I know what I see in the mirror when I am looking: I see a determined person, I see a person who has goals and dreams and the ambition to realize them, I do NOT see a weakling (as he would have me be).

 

So, I have to question, if I am so many negative things, why’d he even bother looking for me last night? I am pretty good at handling myself, not to mention that I tend to wear Harley hard toed riding boots. That alone could break something if necessary. If I am to be so denigrated in the therapy sessions, why would want to go find that? Are you trying to say I Love You? Why can you not just tell me if you love me or if you don’t? If you don’t, let me go. Let me live. If you do love me, stop disparaging me, and let me live.

 

But then again, I am the one who could be filtering all of this through a “defective” mind……but I do not think so.

 

“……Making love to his ego, Ziggy sucked up into his mind…” ~ David Bowie