I do not know why, but I feel little to no emotion about this whole divorce experience, event, to-doing, whatever. I feel like I should feel sad or lonely or depressed or have that ache in your chest that one gets when one loses someone close to them. But, I have none of these feelings that signify grief over something lost that should have and could have been something extraordinary if we had worked at it. Maybe, that is the problem; perhaps, I have already grieved. Sometime during the past two years, but especially the last year, I think I knew the relationship was dead. At least it was for me.
I was exhausted, tired, and worn out by his out and out refusal to make any change in himself or his “habits”. He didn’t need to change. Everything was my fault including his little problem with porn which he claims his other women didn’t mind. I highly doubt that, and think they didn’t say anything so they wouldn’t rock the boat. He was/is very touchy about this subject which, to me, means he knows he has a problem.
So, I sit here and wait, wondering when the crash is going to come as I know it will eventually. So far, I have been angry and mad, and that has staved off the emotional cliff I am bound to walk off of any time soon. But, being angry and mad take up so much energy, and are so counterproductive that I cannot sustain them as a wall against other feelings. I will fall. It is just a matter of how far. This particular situation is about second or third on the Rahe Life Stressors scale, and I am sailing through it. Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong with this picture. I am the annihilistic realist. I am not Mary Poppins when it comes to stuff like this. I am usually by now, extremely depressed to the point of non-function and somewhat suicidal. However, I am none of those things, and I find that a bit unnerving as it is a huge deviation from my norm. I am calm, and that’s not right.
My mother and I filed the final Divorce packet about two days ago. He never officially answered the summons alerting him to the Petition for Divorce action being taken against him. It was due at the Civil Relations or Domestic Relations clerk’s office 30 days after the summons and a copy of the “Lawsuit” (I guess is what it really is) were served to him. He said about 10 days after the 30 were up that he needed to get to court to file his response. I told him his 30 days was up about 2 weeks before. I do not understand this guy. He gets a traffic ticket in Los Lunas, and makes damn good and well he knows where the courthouse for that region is, and what time he needs to be there. And, he goes at the appointed time and date. What is so different about answering a Summons alerting you that your wife is leaving?
It is almost like he is a child, and if he puts his hands over his ears and eyes, it will all go away. I really do not think that he realized that I was deadly serious this time. He had said that I was all talk and no action when it came to leaving the relationship. Hmmm, I guess not. I spent about 2 weeks packing and moving, and I moved to an apartment about 10 days ago. My mom then discovered there is different paperwork to be filed in a Default Judgment scenario which is what we now have. So, with my mom helping (as a private attorney, she filed lots of Divorce cases before she moved to the City), I filed the Default Judgment packet asking the Judge to please dissolve the marriage, and return to me to my rightful name. I never did feel comfortable having taken his last name. Foreshadowing, perhaps? At any rate, those are the two things that I want: the marriage from hell dissolved, and my name returned to me.
I do not think he knows what he did with all his passive-aggressive and narcissistic behaviour. I have taken steps backwards due to his verbal and emotional abuse and neglect. I no longer feel a sense of self-worth (if I was worthy, then he would have not been on the Internet looking at and watching porn), I no longer feel I am attractive or even the slightest bit sexy (see comment above), I have lost self-esteem (whatever that is, i know that I have lost it), I treat myself badly, I feel very unlovable and not wanted in any way, shape or form,etc. And, all he had to do to keep his marriage was get out of Pornography “fun-land”, read a damn book about my main illness, Bipolar disorder type I, and show me that I was wanted and appreciated. That is all he had to do. Instead, he did the opposite. He would claim that only three things were important to me: my mental health, my self, and my cat. He left something out. He was important to me; I loved him (or thought I did), and all I really wanted was for him to be happy, but I am now guessing he is not capable of true and lasting happiness or contentment.
Hopefully in about 2 weeks, i will be rid of this foul and toxic relationship, I will have my name back, and I can go ahead with the work of healing and putting back together everything he undid. All those years of therapy, and this asshole wipes out about 2 years of progression towards my stable madness.
I forgot to add my pledges at the end of my post. The five bloggers I would like to pledge are in no particular order (everyone has made a dent in my thick skull:) )
I pledge my commitment to the Blog For Mental Health 2013 Project. I will blog about mental health topics not only for myself, but for others. By displaying this badge, I show my pride, dedication, and acceptance for mental health. I use this to promote mental health education in the struggle to erase stigma.
Blog For Mental Health 2013
A little bit about my own struggle with what I choose to call mental “interestingness” because I refuse to labeled “ill.” I have been clinically diagnosed since I was a child with chronic depression which I struggled largely on my own. My parents were too involved in their own career ambitions and other “dramatic” situations to realize that I was suicidally depressed at the age of 12.
Most of my depression I now attribute to an organic chemical imbalance as well as the situation I lived in. I was bullied in school (starting in grammar school and continuing through high school) for being “different from the other students. For example, I was very bright and curious for my age so my parents had me tested for our school district’s “Gifted” student program which included an IQ test aimed at grade school students. I scored in the 98th percentile which meant that for one hour every day, I went to another class. The kids I went to school with thought that I was stuck-up and above everybody else because I got to leave the regular class. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
In reality, I was profoundly sad because I had no friends, I tried to make myself “small” so nobody would notice me, and I was extremely shy and inhibited. I cried easily which the other students used to my detriment. I cannot remember feeling anything close to happiness until college, and by then, I already had one serious suicide attempt under my belt. I had just convinced the psychiatrist I had been seeing and hating every minute of seeing that I was fine and no longer needed his services. About a week later, I swallowed a bottle of aspirin. Something in me wouldn’t let me go through with it though, and I called my best friend to come and get me. Even at that time, I would not try to get help from my family because by then, I also felt like a huge burden to them because there was clearly something wrong with me. I used to wonder why I couldn’t just be a little more like my younger sister who seemed to float through life. Why did everything for me have be difficult? I still have trouble listening to Metallica’s “Fade to Black” which is about suicide and the soundtrack I chose for my first attempt.
Later that year, I was assaulted by the guy I was seeing at the time. I was 16 and 4 months old. It was in the fall right after the State Fair had finished, so I am guessing October. After that I really couldn’t have cared less about anything least of all myself. I began to hang out with older kids, runaways, hippies, bikers, anyone who might have weed. I managed to keep myself away from the hard drugs until I was about 18. I had also applied for concurrent enrollment at the University here so I could finish my senior year and start my freshman year at the same time. I guess I was what people would call happy during that time, but I think that was an illusion. I spent a lot of my time self-medicating. There is too much to tell about that period of my life without writing a short story. We’ll just say it was a very dysfunctional happiness.
My current therapist of about 10 years think that I had moved beyond chronic depression somewhere in those late teen years. I had “graduated” to full blown Bipolar disorder. However, I was so thoroughly “medicated,” no doctor or counselor picked it up. There was about three or four more suicide attempts between then and the total and complete nuclear meltdown that I experienced in my very early 30’s. That was a depressive episode unlike anything I had ever experienced. I was agoraphobic, having panic attacks, and suffering from acute anxiety. How I made it to the first appointment with my therapist still eludes me. I guess I was determined to figure out what was wrong with me because something was really, really wrong this time. By this time, I had tried suicide about 4 times. was actively trying to drink myself to death, and had been through drug rehab and been arrested twice.
I was diagnosed with Bipolar Depression type I with Psychotic Tendencies at the age of about 31 along with Panic Disorder with and with out Agoraphobia, Generalized Anxiety and ADD. As far as I was concerned life was over. I became a “frequent flyer” at the psych hospital where they tried numerous medications to stabilize my moods. I don’t know what was worse, the moods or the drugs.I was what they call treatment resistant although I was compliant, and did give each and every new medication a go until side effects would force me to stop. I think they finally stabilized me on atypical anti-psychotics, benzodiazepines and Adderall in 2006 when I was nearly 35. I can’t even imagine what mt parents went through. My mom hung in there to the best of her ability, and my father disengaged from me. My mom still hangs in there with me, and I haven’t seen my father for about three years. I have talked to him three times in that time frame.
Now that I have achieved what I call a “stable” madness, I will talk to people about what it is like to live with these challenges on a daily basis because I have come to view life as a challenge to be overcome not thrown away, I have become a practicing Buddhist, I have not tried to kill myself in 5 years, and I have started a blog detailing what life is like with a primary diagnosis of Bipolar disorder with all of its glorious ups and dismal downs. I have chosen to be minimally medicated so that I can still feel emotion in a relatively normal way, and I have chosen to be completely open about my “interestingness” in the hopes that someone else could possibly see themselves in me, and realize they are not suffering alone nor are they flawed in any way. I have chosen to do so in order to show people that those of us that they consider weird or different are not all that strange at all; we simply experience and perceive the world through a different lens just like everyone else, and that we are not the scary monsters the media turns us into. If I can change the mind of one person about what mental health issues are truly about, then I have made a dent.
I am also a Buddhist as well as many other things, and although this explanation is particular to Tibetan Buddhist chant and prayer (I am a believer in the Nichiren sect of Buddhism), The Dalai Lama explains the main precepts of Buddhism quite well. So, I thought I would post it for anyone interested in Buddhism, in general. Buddhism is very peaceful and, for me, calming.
This photo has a barren, cold beauty to it that only Winter can create. Being a creature of the cool and the cold (not much for spring or summer), this is gorgeous. Nature in its inherent and bare beauty.
A Bipolar Journey Through The Rabbit Hole 