What is it about anniversaries of significant moments in our lives; both good and bad and some that are both at the same time? Is it the mind that remembers these times? Is it our heart that keeps these dates close? Or, are these moments so engraved upon our being that we cannot seem to forget? I only wonder as I have in the past when a significant date is coming up or has passed which of these questions is the true question. Or, if they all have correct answers.
On August 29th of this year I will have been divorced for one year exactly even though the process took a couple of months. What is bothering me is how I feel about it. I feel sad, but I also feel a sense of relief, I feel failure as this is or was the only time I got married, but at the same time, I feel the divorce was successful as it restored me to a form of equilibrium, I feel freedom, but also a sense of being shackled as I now have to start the whole process all over again, and I am not the free-wheeling 20-something that I used to be. I am now a grown woman that will not settle as I used to. I have my ways of doing things that will conflict with another’s ideas about how things should work. I have much higher standards than in my college years. I know exactly what type of man I want, and I am afraid that he got away when I decided to get married to someone that I share very little with. Hence, the divorce that I initiated.
I always believed that I would get married once and only once, and so I waited until I thought the right man had come to me. I still believe that I will marry once and only once because of the trauma that relationship put both of us through, the verbal abuse (he saw it as constructive criticism), the emotional neglect has only begun to heal, to suture those gaping wounds left in my heart and my mind.
As the date approaches, I feel more and more anxious. I am concerned that I will not meet another man like the one I knew. The man who loved me so unconditionally that he even loved my mood swings, my paranoia, my anxiety attacks, and my being prone to fatalistic thinking. He loved me with all my quirks, strengths, flaws, and craziness. Nothing could rattle this man. If I was having a bad day, he hugged me, kissed the top of my head, said nothing and left, but I felt better. I told him one time that I loved him, only once. His response was “I have loved you for a long time”. He said it once, but he meant it with all his heart and soul. We only had to say it once. It did not need to be confirmed. That we loved each other just was. It scares me to think that there may only be one man like this, only one man who fit so neatly into my heart that I loved him without question, and he loved me in return. Here comes the “what if” question; what if he was the perfect “soul mate” for me, and I for him and I lost him to marry another who was anything but?
I do not like anniversaries at all, but at least now I am old enough to have gained the wisdom that time does not heal all wounds, but it does make them bearable. However, right now, with the date looming just a a little less than a month away, I feel like a scab has been picked off and I have become a member of the walking wounded. I think I have answered my question; these dates are engraved upon our being, and as humans, we will never completely forget. Forgive, yes, forget, no. I do not believe it is our nature to forget. I hope I am wrong about that.
Where was I? Oh yes, my parents were waiting for me, and they were angry although not quite as pissed off as I was. However, I may have been in shock by the time I got home. All my parents had to say was the equivalent of “Where the hell have you been”? I didn’t answer. If I remember correctly I told them to fuck off, and gave them the finger as I turned around and headed down the hall to bathroom. All I wanted to do was bathe…..for hours. You would think one of my parents would have found it odd that I stayed in the bathtub until about 3 am. If I were a parent, this would worry me. I had obviously been crying, my whole demeanor had changed in a matter of an hour or so, and I told my parents to fuck off which I had never done in my life. But, life was different now. Something had been stolen from me that night that could never be replaced; my innocence, faith in people, belief that most people were decent at heart. I knew differently now. People, including my parents, were not to be trusted in any way, shape, or form. I cold not believe that my parents had yelled at me for being late especially when there was something clearly wrong; I mean, who takes a four hour bath at 10 at night. Clue number one, and they chose to ignore it. Loss of interest in school, running away, staying out all night without calling, and the beginning of my experimentation with alcohol and drugs. And, they couldn’t see anything was wrong. I never did tell them what had happened to me that night. They would not have believed me. They thought I lied all the time, and the more dramatic, the better.
I am still pissed off at them for not taking time to find out why I was late, and why I seemed so “out of it”. Parents are supposed to support and protect their kids as best as they can, and mine yelled at me for being late because I was too busy being assaulted. Something died in me that night, and it has never grown back. It has a simple name: trust. I couldn’t trust my own parents. I couldn’t trust anybody. To this day, I have this thing about being as clean as possible, and I still do not trust anyone that I do not know well. I look over my shoulder when walking down the street, I have an exaggerated startle reflex, I have infrequent (thank all the powers that be) nightmares, I always feel like I am being followed, or that everyone has an ulterior motive that is bound to hurt me. The thing that has always bothered me is that I can see the whole episode as if I am floating above it, and I can feel it in the first person. So, I have the disassociated third person view, and I have the first person view. It is pretty nifty. I didn’t repress any of the attack. It is as fresh in my mind now as it was then. This incident probably shaped who I was then more than anything else that had occurred up to that point.
Bullies at school be damned; I had just survived something far worse than bullying, and it was made so much worse by the fact that I could not count on my parents to listen. They didn’t actually find out or even believe it had happened until my therapist told them. I guess it took someone with a Ph.D. for them to truly believe, and this was about 17 years after the fact. Sad, just freaking sad on so many levels.
As I stated earlier, This marked my initial foray into the world of what became a really bad substance abuse problem. At first, it was smoking pot on occasion with a friend of mine. Then the pot smoking became a regular thing. It helped me deal with what had happened. Like I said, I didn’t tell anyone for about 2-3 years. The only thing that was apparent was my grades fell dramatically. If I had wanted to die before, I really wanted to die now, and I really didn’t give a flying f*&^ what happened to me after that. Sexual assault is one of the most devastating events anyone can live through. It is completely different than any other form of physical violence because in a matter of minutes, your whole life and outlook change. Hitting someone is one thing, and yes, it can break a person down over a period of time. Sexual abuse makes the survivor feel dirty, ashamed, guilty, and like it was somehow their fault. And, you know intellectually these ways of thinking and feeling are not right, but your heart and soul don’t know that. So that was the opening of my 16th year on this planet. Not a good start. The “drug years” follow, but they are hazy…..very hazy….
I am tired of so many things……something has got to give and it better not be me. I just wish the world would wake up one morning and realize that while we all may hold different beliefs, lead different lifestyles, eat different food, pray to different divine beings/powers, we are all the same at the core. We all desire to be loved and happy and have friends and a sense of belonging somewhere. We all love our families and our children, and would do anything to keep them out of harm’s way. But, no, people have to be petty and put a stop to any disagreement within their ranks, sometimes with deadly, militaristic force. That’s not going to solve anything in the long run except to determine who had the better weapons and who had the better allies. I find it all frighteningly petty.
There is so much more that people could be doing than having to fight their own governments while their governments hang onto their power by using chemical agents on their own people. Even we have done it. Look at the guys who came back from Desert Storm and started showing up at clinics with mysterious ailments. There are times when I get so discouraged that anything will change because that’s just the “way it has been.” Well, why can it not be “that’s the way it was?” I think I need sleep tonight. My brain is starting to bounce, and I am starting to think aloud and on “paper,” so to speak.
I would love to set up a world-wide contest of sorts to see who could create a country with a government that not only worked, but worked for its citizens, and where diversity was completely embraced as being part of life because no matter how much you stomp your feet and scream and cry, people are going to be different than one another. Accept it, embrace it, get over it.
I am just so extraordinarily pissed off today. About everything. I just do not understand why people hurt the people they purport to love like the air they breathe. I do not understand why people form exclusive little groups and if you don’t belong, then you might as well cease to live. That is what bullying is all about. And, on the subject of bullying, does it seem more prevalent today than when you were in school (provided you have graduated college by now)? I mean, the kids can’t even escape it at home. In my day, you were bullied at school and maybe a little bit by crank phone calls. Now, these kids have iPads, smartphones, they are on the Internet for as many hours as we used to watch cartoons. They can’t escape it. It is insidious and everywhere. Why are 12 year olds committing suicide? What can be so bad in a 12 year long life that rather than struggle through it, they choose to take their lives? I wonder, because I was that kid. You know, the one that was slightly off, but you couldn’t put a finger on it. I was harassed from grade school until I left high school, and yes, I did try several times to take my life. But, I couldn’t do it. Something has kept me alive for many years for some reason that I have not figured out yet. I should be dead. I should not be sitting here letting my mind dance over the million thoughts I have in one minute of an average person’s life. I hate having Bipolar and I hate having ADD, and I hate being anxious so much of the time and I really hate the paranoia that comes with all of them, especially the bipolar and the PTSD which I hate also primarily because of the way I came to develop it. I just really do not like much of anything today. I fell off the sine wave.
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.
English: Caricature on “The great epidemic of pornography”. From 19th-century French illustration (in Courrier Français?). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)An Examination of Being (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Addiction (Photo credit: quadrant6ix)
Since I spend a good deal of time on the Internet I decided to look into when that usage becomes the compulsive need that drives addiction. In addition, having been an abuser of both legal (alcohol) and illegal (whatever you have) substances, and am currently addicted to my anti-anxiety medication (which makes it feel like I have come full-circle ~ that’s a whole different post) I am pretty good at picking out an addict to drugs, alcohol, or now according to the DSM-5, the Internet though not specifically, pornography.
However, the expanded definition of the compulsive behavior that drives Internet Addiction could certainly include an addiction to Internet Pornography. It is readily available, much of it free, and you don’t have to risk being seen coming out of the local porn shop. All an addict, or general consumer has to do is type “Free Porn” into any search engine and there it is. Trust me, I have been dealing with a porn addict for about three years, and I have tried the searches to see what comes up. It is instant gratification for the addict, and that serves to make it a rather insidious addiction. Other addicts have to actively go out and find their “drug of choice.” The Internet, on the other hand, is always there. It is a 24/7 “dealer.”
“In 1990 Aviel Goodman proposed a general definition of all types of addictions in order to extend the specific disorders included in the DSM-III-R. While not explicitly in the context of pornography, Goodman explains his criteria for addiction as a “process whereby a behavior, that can function both to produce pain and to provide escape from internal discomfort, [and] is employed in a pattern characterized by (1) failure to control the behavior (powerlessness) and (2) continuation of the behavior despite significant negative consequences (unmanageability).”[4] Goodman, Aviel (1990). “Addiction: Definition and implications”. Addiction 85 (11): 1403–8.
“Pornography addiction is diagnosed when an individual engages in the overuse or abuse of pornography to the extent that they experience negative consequences.” These negative consequences include significant losses or impairment including social, workplace, and personal relationships. “According to the San Francisco Chronicle, ‘If people want to escape feelings of low self-esteem, shame, isolation or the pressures of life, work or relationships, pornography is a place to get lost and feel wanted, imagining the perfect partners who always desires them – and whom they can always satisfy.'” [7]http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Porn-addiction-destroys-relationships-lives-3272230.php#ixzz2N3ZSi4o7San Francisco Chronicle. The Chronicle goes on to point out that people who are truly addicted to pornography are at very high risk for job loss and spousal loss.
According to Dr. Asa Don Brown, an author for the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association: “Pornography’s downside is its ability to overtake one’s mind, body, and spirit. For so many, they become so enthralled with this alternative to sex, that it clouds their judgements leading to an acceptable denial.”
As with other addictions, the Internet Addict may try to stop or cut down on the time they spend on the Internet. They are often successful in cutting down for a while, but the compulsion is stronger than their willpower. While I understand this both mentally and emotionally (stopping my own addictive behaviors was extremely difficult and terrifying; what was I going to fall back on when life bit me in the butt?). It is difficult to watch when you are not the addict. People who love the addict worry for their health, the danger of being arrested if caught with illegal substances, the irrational nature of an addict’s behavior which is often explosive if pressured, and the general deterioration of the addict’s overall mental and physical health. In some cases where the addict has tried repeatedly to quit whatever it is they are addicted to and failed, their support systems will begin to shun them in an attempt to protect themselves. This includes parents, friends, spouses and acquaintances. The same holds true for Internet Addiction. It really is no different than a physical addiction which often includes psychological components which must also be addressed if the addict is to become well again.
Dr. Brown, mentioned above, goes on to say that: “For the addict, it is less about the desire and more about fulfilling a compulsive need.”
In a recent study, Tao et al. proposed the following eight symptoms of Internet addiction: from the DSM-V, proposed criteria for Internet Addiction:
Preoccupation with the internet A strong desire for the internet. Thinking about previous online activity or anticipation of the next online session. Internet use is the dominant activity in daily life.
Withdrawal symptoms Manifested by a dysphoric mood, anxiety, irritability and boredom after several days without internet activity.
Tolerance A marked increase in internet use required to achieve satisfaction.
Difficult to control Persistent desire and/or unsuccessful attempts to control, cut back or discontinue internet use.
Disregard of harmful consequences
Continued excessive use of internet despite knowledge of having a persistent or recurrent physical or psychological problems likely to have been caused or exacerbated by internet use.
Social communications and interests are lost
Loss of interests, previous hobbies, entertainment as a direct result of, and with the exception of, internet use.
Alleviation of negative emotions
Uses the internet to escape or relieve a dysphoric mood (e.g. feelings of helplessness, guilt, anxiety).
Hiding from friends and relatives
Deception of family members, therapist and others about the actual cost/time of internet involvement.
Additionally, several subtypes of Internet Addiction have been identified:
“Several subtypes of Internet Use Disorder have been proclaimed, such as overwhelming, or inappropriate pornography use, online-gaming, online social networking, blogging, or internet-shopping. Also from the DSM-V:
The proposed DSM-V criteria for Internet Addiction are as follows:
In 2010, Tao et al. proposed the following diagnostic criteria for Internet addiction:
Symptoms:
All the following symptoms must be present:
Preoccupation with the internet (the subject thinks about previous online activity or anticipates next online session).
Withdrawal (dysphoric mood, anxiety, irritability and boredom after several days without internet activity).
At least one (or more) of the following must be present:
Tolerance (marked increase in internet use required to achieve satisfaction),
Persistent desire and/or unsuccessful attempts to control, cut back or discontinue internet use,
Continued excessive use of internet despite knowledge of having a persistent or recurrent physical or psychological problem likely to have been caused or exacerbated by internet use,
Loss of interests, previous hobbies, entertainment as a direct result of, and with the exception of, internet use,
Uses the internet to escape or relieve a dysphoric mood (e.g. feelings of helplessness, guilt, anxiety).
Exclusion: The excessive internet use is not better accounted for by psychotic disorders or bipolar I disorder.
Clinically significant impairment:
The excessive internet use leads to functional impairments (eg. reduced social, academic, or working ability), including loss of a significant relationship, job, educational or career opportunities.
Course:
The internet addiction must have lasted for an excess of 3 months, with at least 6 hours of internet usage (non-business/non-academic) per day.
Having lived with an Internet addict for approximately three years with his primary usage focusing on pornogrpahy, I can attest to the deleterious effect that this “subtype” of Internet addiction can have. I have felt betrayed, cheated on (which sounds irrational at first until you think about it; your spouse is spending all or most of their time looking at pictures of other naked women, and your marital relationship is suffering), I have felt that he completely forgot his marriage vows or never took them seriously in the first place, I have become much more critical of how I look than I ever was before, my own libido has dropped (probably due to poor self image), poor self-image, lack of worth as a woman, unattractive (how am I supposed to compete with these women; I am an average woman, perhaps a little prettier than some and not as pretty as others), the list goes on.
He sees nothing wrong with his behavior (a sure sign of addiction), and doesn’t understand why I am so bothered by it. He claims his other significant others weren’t bothered. I think they just didn’t say anything. The ultimate result of what he calls a “diversion” and I call an “addiction” due to the fact that he engages in his “diversion” every day for at least 6-8 hours is that he lost me about two years ago. I just didn’t have the strength to leave or, perhaps I thought he would get better. He didn’t, and so now he has lost his wife whom he purported to love. I certainly hope it was worth it.
my brain feels stuck. Ever have so much running through your head that you have to get it out or you’ll most certainly go crazy, but you just have no idea where to start. I mean stream of consciousness writing is fine for your journal, but it doesn’t work well when you want people to be able to follow your thought process. I think this is the natural offshoot of a draft I started called “Marriage Counseling Round Three” that I never finished. It is finished now.
Round Three of marriage counseling culminated in my being so angry and upset and frustrated with the fact that I had just sat there for another hour listening to how everything that is wrong with my marriage is due to my having Bipolar disorder (among several others that just exacerbate it, namely PTSD, but that’s a whole other post). It is not ourmarriage. It is mymarriage like I own it as a possession. Last I looked marriage was defined by the union of two, not one, persons. Anyway, we stopped at Walmart on the way home, and not really wanting to deal with Walmart in my current state of mind which, at the time, was rather antisocial. Funny how listening to everything being your fault can do that to you. Especially, if it is a recurring theme. Anyway, I opted to stay in the car while husband went to buy juice and some other item. “I’ll be right out,” he says. An hour and a half later, I was handing the keys to the car to him wordlessly and heading for the bus stop. I didn’t really mean to stay out until 3:30 in the morning, but maybe I did. I know I wanted nothing to do with him or being around him or feeling trapped in the house. So, maybe I intentionally stayed out that late.
I get home, and he is mad. Probably rightfully so. I told him that i had stopped by a dive blues bar that I used to go to with a really good friend, and that they had a band that night. He said he had tried to call several times but I did not answer. Ever tried to hear your cell ringing when a band is onstage tearing it up? You can’t. So, here’s part of where my brain gets stuck. He spent an entire hour telling what essentially amounted to lies to the therapist (he slickly left out his own predeliction to shopping when upset or just bored), and blamed our entire financial situation on my having Bipolar disorder. I can honestly say that, yes, having Bipolar disorder does sometimes make handling finances a bit tricky. However, I have managed for 22 years to keep a roof over my head, bills close to paid, and food in the fridge. Granted, I don’t have a stellar credit rating, but that may be a blessing in disguise.
Anyway, here he is telling me how he had gone out looking for me, and drove around for a couple of hours and called and yadda-yadda-ya. All this after spending an hour telling the therapist how essentially everything was my fault which is the same tune he sang a the previous two sessions. So, now my brain is trying it’s broken best to process this conflicting information and coming up with nothing. It’s like a seized engine.
The relationship between us has been declining fairly rapidly over the past 6 or 7 months. He is sleeping on the sofa, refuses to sleep in the bed, no “marital” relations, you know, all the precursors for divorce. All of this also contains two fairly “feisty” arguments, one of which left me feeling so much rage after being yelled and cursed at for an hour that I had to take my night time meds and go to sleep rather than remain awake and prone to who knows what. Although, when I am that angry, I tend towards a sort of homicidal calmness that freaks even me out. I don’t curse, I do not raise my voice, I simply say exactly what I am thinking in no uncertain terms, and that can be a little much sometimes. I never claimed I was the vision of perfection. I am simply a person trying to manage life with several rather debilitating and chronic and potentially dangerous (to myself) diagnoses.
Well, last night, I ended up bringing a friend home so he could just chill out for awhile in a relatively calm environment. Note: the friend was a guy. So, we kick back for a while and read the Craig’s List personals to amuse ourselves (they are amusing). Then about 12 am, I set off to take him home where he and his girlfriend commence their argument that was the reason he left in the first place. I didn’t think anything about bringing a FRIEND over. But, apparently, husband took it as I was cheating on him by bringing this male friend over and then hanging out at his house while he gathered some stuff and getting a motel room. When I got home, I sure as hell wished I had the money for a motel room. I was Jezebel for bringing another male into the house. I had disrespected the house, disrespected him, disrespected everything holy.
He said it was a good thing we had no lethal weapons in the house. That type of statement does not have a good effect on me. Inferring that you may or may not try to physically hurt me sets off a whole host of triggers; the strongest of which is self-preservation at all costs. I have already been assaulted and been in a physically abusive relationship. I do believe they call what I have as a result of those experiences in my youth PTSD. Any mention that you may be about to hurt me makes me defensive and ready to go an the attack because I will never be hurt physically again. I made my mind up about that a long time ago. So, we get into “feisty” conversation number two in the same number of weeks leaving me determined to end this whole debacle once and for all. It didn’t even occur to me to sleep on it, and maybe things would be better in the morning because I already knew they wouldn’t. Besides, now I have been physically threatened. Now it is a given. I am leaving. Staying and trying to work it out is no longer an option. He has threatened my life in a round about way.
The main reason my brain is stuck is that I have never once accused him of cheating even though he would get all dressed up just to go run errands that took him 8 hours. The same errands took me about 2 hours. Where was he for those extra 6 hours? And he has the utter nerve to threaten me. No. Divorce proceedings will be initiated at the end of this week. He killed what was left of his marriage last night. I have had it with the constant barrage of well meaning remarks, had enough of being told that I am the problem, that because I have mental issues I am not worthy enough, that I had no life before him, that everything I do is not quite good enough, and lastly, being told that it was a good thing there are no lethal weapons in the house. You do not threaten me like that. You just do not. So, that’s the culmination of Marriage Counseling Round Three. Divorce. Sometimes you have to protect yourself.
On the Threshold of Eternity (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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I have Bipolar I with Psychotic Features. I do not always perceive what is real or true, and what my own warped mind has fabricated. I get angry at things most “normal” people would brush off, I get combative when I feel I am being attacked, I experience extreme changes in mood, and the list could go on forever.
My husband is a chronic depressive (not diagnosed) who is constantly harping on me about my illness, and how everything revolves around me. He complains that no one cares about him myself included. I ask him what is bothering him, and he either tells me that nothing is wrong, or he will start talking, and in the end, it is inevitably me who is causing all his problems. I will admit to taking out past frustrations on him, and nobody deserves that. However, there are things he does in the present that have caused arguments as well. He is in nearly complete denial about his depression. He calls it “being out of it.” Call it what you like, he is depressed. I know it when I see it; I have spent most of life that way.
Currently, our marriage is barreling downhill at an astonishing pace. He sleeps on the sofa downstairs, and I sleep in the bed. This has been the arrangement for several months now. He will not talk to me, and when he does the conversation invariably turns to “No one thinks about me, they only think of you.” They are my family. Of course they have my interests at heart; and he has made more than a few mistakes in this marriage and with my family that have caused them to be somewhat against him. He feels entitled to all the attention I “get”.
When he does speak, it is almost a given that my having Bipolar disorder will become the focus of the conversation. I do not think about having Bipolar very often. I have had it for decades. My meds are like taking an aspirin for a headache. I just do not think about it that much. I do monitor my self with regards to mood, anxiety level, etc. so that my psychiatrist can adjust my medication accordingly. He is the one that always brings it up, usually in relation to two other Bipolar women he’s known. He just doesn’t see that I am not them, that Bipolar manifests differently in every person diagnosed. Some are very high functioning, and some are not. I tend to be relatively high functioning (most of the time), so I do not understand some of his criticisms of me. I think it’s transferrence or projection of his feelings onto me. I am the mirror of his own illness; it is easier for him to look at me and project his feelings onto me because I am a diagnosed Manic Depressive than to look at himself and realize that he is depressed and not functioning very well.
For myself, I try not to let his mood get in my way. It is so easy for a Bipolar or anyone, for that matter, to start to feed off the feelings of someone close to them. However, for the Bipolar individual, it is even more important to not allow someone else’s feelings about themselves become your problem. As far as I am concerned, I have to look out for my health first because if I go down the rabbit hole with him, there is nobody to take care of daily household business. That, and Bipolars have a very high suicide rate, both completed and attempted. So, when I get too stressed or feel myself sliding down the rabbit hole for tea with the Mad Hatter, I become concerned because I do have attempts in my past, and the thought will flicker briefly every day that being dead would be easier.
It is difficult enough for a relationship to flourish when one party has Mental Health issues, but when both parties have mental health problems, it becomes survival oriented, communication breaks down as the depressed person becomes more withdrawn and the Bipolar half starts to cycle rapidly through episodes. I have a tendency to think everything is my fault, so when he goes off on one of little journeys, I am often left wondering, “What did I do or didn’t do?” The question drives me nuts. He will claim it has nothing to do with me, but it generally is some oversight on my part. Basically, I am left holding the bag for everything that goes wrong. He won’t even admit to himself that maybe his own problems with depression may be having a negative effect on the relationship. Nope, it is always my manic depression. This type of relationship where both parties have a mental issue doesn’t go very far. It can’t because it always in survival mode; it takes a lot of work to make a relationship like this work. One has to have basic respect and compassion for the other, otherwise it will end as one or the other begins to feel that they need to protect their sanity.
As the date approaches, I feel more and more anxious. I am concerned that I will not meet another man like the one I knew. The man who loved me so unconditionally that he even loved my mood swings, my paranoia, my anxiety attacks, and my being prone to fatalistic thinking. He loved me with all my quirks, strengths, flaws, and craziness. Nothing could rattle this man. If I was having a bad day, he hugged me, kissed the top of my head, said nothing and left, but I felt better. I told him one time that I loved him, only once. His response was “I have loved you for a long time”. He said it once, but he meant it with all his heart and soul. We only had to say it once. It did not need to be confirmed. That we loved each other just was. It scares me to think that there may only be one man like this, only one man who fit so neatly into my heart that I loved him without question, and he loved me in return. Here comes the “what if” question; what if he was the perfect “soul mate” for me, and I for him and I lost him to marry another who was anything but?
A Bipolar Journey Through The Rabbit Hole 