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.
This is an open and ongoing dialogue I have with myself. Some days it is quiet on the frontlines, other days, the frontline has shifted. It is like trench warfare; no one side advances very far before the retreat. Today the trench belongs to the other side so I write.
An Open Letter To One Who Denies Me
Hello,
I would like to introduce myself. I am the part of you that you will not acknowledge. Half of my DNA is the result of you. I possess 23 pairs of your chromosomes. I look like you. I have the same coloring as you, freckled and fair and strawberry blonde. I have inherited your intelligence, your thirst for knowledge, your seeking ways, your search for an elusive “truth.” I have the gene that causes you to deny me. I am like your mother, yet I am nothing like her. Yes, I paint, yes, I love to travel, yes, I enjoy conversation with interesting people, yes, I am fascinated by all things in this world. But, I lack the storminess of her. Yes, I used to be a person of stormy and unpredictable moods, but unlike her, I live in this century where they have almost figured out how to medicate the storminess so it no longer wreaks havoc on the world around it.
Granted, I choose to take the least amount of medication that will keep my madness stable. I choose to do so because I still want to feel that storminess that drives my writing, my painting, my dabbles in computer graphics. In other words, the stormy weather that makes me a person distinguishable from others. I manifest the storm in a way that is completely different than she did. I am not her, therefore, I do not understand why you would deny that which is part of you.
Let me tell you about myself. First and foremost, I am a distinct person. I am not my illnesses. I have my illnesses, and to tell the truth, I would not have it any other way. My experience of the world is rich with emotion and appreciation and gratitude (even though some would disagree with that statement). I am not like the other that is also part of you. I have opinions that are based on my experience of what I read and find to be the correct belief. Maybe I am wrong in some of my beliefs and perceptions, but you have to take into account that all I experience is filtered through the somewhat crooked lens of my perception. The important thing is that they are uniquely mine.
Secondly, I am just as flawed as you are. Maybe that is why you deny me. You see flaws in me that you have seen in another. But, once again, I am not her. I am her on atypical anti-psychotics, anti-anxiety medication, and a little stimulant to control my racing mind. She was untreated and, therefore, ran rampant when the episodes hit. At least this is what I am guessing because no one will tell me anything about her except that she was “odd,” and that I remind relatives of her. I have heard this since I was a child, and since I remind people of her, I can only assume she struggled with the same ailments that I do. She must have been “mad” as well from what little I can gather. Which is not much because you have chosen to deny my existence in your world.
Why would you do that? Am I really that much of a disappointment to you? Did I fail in some way to live up to your exceptionally high standards (mine are higher than yours, by the way)? What have I done to cause you to deny a part of yourself? Or, is it guilt for passing on the predisposition to madness? You know, as an intelligent researcher, that only the predisposition is passed down. Some external stressor is thought to activate the “disease.” Or, perhaps, you look at me as being “diseased,” and since all of your research has focussed on eradicating disease from cells, I am unacceptable because you cannot separate me from the “disease.”
For whatever reason you choose to deny me, you are choosing to deny a part of you. I would have thought that by now, you would have learned to accept yourself as you are. Some of us have been forced to do exactly that due to being considered “different” than…….
I know it’s bad when I have forsaken my Alice in Chains, Pink Floyd, and Nine Inch Nails for Marilyn Manson. I think I am slowly going mad. The Christians have a saying that God does not give more than you can handle. That’s a nice sentiment but I am Buddhist, and everything that is good in my life and everything that is bad in my life is all my own doing (or undoing, as it appears to be). I am the source of the answer and the problem, and I have no answers, just problems. I can no longer see any light at the end of the tunnel. It has gone out, or the lantern bearer is on break. I feel like I am in the boat crossing the river Styx with Charon at the helm, and he is taking us further and further down the river towards Hades and away from the light.
My soon to be ex-husband is closed up in his little room with the door shut watching his porn, and diving deeper into his fantasy life. I wish I had a fantasy life. I have always been too practical and logical to have much of an active fantasy life. To me, if it wasn’t something tangible I could touch, it didn’t exist (I know that sounds a little like Kant‘s philosophy that as soon as an object is out of sight, does it cease to exist?), if it could not be proven scientifically, I had no use for it. I do not believe is God, so that is out of the question. It would be so nice to just be able to “turn my problems over to God” and let him/her deal with the hows and the whys. But I can’t see or touch God, therefore he/she doesn’t exist in my realm. I wish I could “Let go and let God,” or whatever that bumper sticker says. But, how can one turn one’s problems over to an entity they cannot prove the existence of? That’s too much of a leap of faith for me. It requires trust in something I cannot touch, see or conceive of.
So, I am becoming increasingly stuck in my own mind which is not a good place to be right now. I cannot seem to achieve the mind-heart disconnect that I have been able to successfully complete in the past. Even though he has taken away my sense of myself as attractive and sexy which are very feminine yearnings. I had that sense once, but that part of me is under deep cover right now. I know I should be mad about that, but somehow, I have decided that everything that went wrong with this relationship is my fault. I wasn’t tolerant of his porn addiction (and it is an addiction, at this point), I did not act or do things the way he expected a wife to do. I am NOT going to clean the house in lingerie and high heels as he seems to have come to believe that “real and sexy” women do. Porn has warped his sense of gender roles and sexuality in general. And, yet he claims to know the difference between the reality of marriage and the “fantasy women.” No, he doesn’t. With addiction came the blurring of the line, just like it does with any addiction. However, I felt very disrespected, and said so on more than one occasion. He didn’t listen. Junkies do not listen to people telling them they are sick. They believe their behaviour is within the realm of the normal. I have been an addict. There is nothing normal about it.
I cannot decide how I feel. I am decidedly not manic, nor am I particularly depressed. I am extraordinarily stressed out, and I am sad. I can tell because I am dropping weight like I was actually dieting. But, the truth is I cannot eat. I cannot sleep for more than 4 or 5 hours a night. This is going to drive me mad. Not nuts, I am already there, but completely mad. The kind you may or may not come back from in the same form you had before. There is no going back, anyway. Every experience shapes you for the better, the worse or both. This is a both situation. I have changed for the better in some ways, and for the worse in others. Like my trust factor is shot right now. I entrusted him with my heart and soul, and he broke my heart. There is nothing on this planet that I will likely experience at this point in time that will break my soul. I have already been through that, too, and lived. It took a while to pull the pieces back together, but I did it, and came out stronger. Continue reading →
Silhouette of a woman in a cave looking at her own shadow. The image can be used in philosophy (for example in Allegory of the cave) as well as to show psychological principles (for example Borderline personality disorder). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
that I did not feel so alone while being with someone.
that I could have some support and a partner/significant other/spouse that would take the time to learn about my mental “interestingness” instead of relying on information that he gleaned from two previous relationships: one also had Borderline Personality disorder (I do not), the other promised him that she had it “under control” and that it would not be a problem. How can you make that kind of promise when you have an organic mental illness? I am not them, and they are not me. But, he assumes this vast knowledge and understanding of this sometimes life-threatening illness. He knows jack shit about the ways this disorder can manifest. He doesn’t understand how you can be fine one day and totally freaking out the next. But, that is due to his refusal to learn anything beyond his experience.
that this illness impacted only me. Then I wouldn’t have to risk hurting or disappointing people.
mostly for people to become educated about mental illness and mental health, in general. That way we won’t “scare” the so-called “normals”. I haven’t met any in my lifetime.
also for societal and systemic change of the view of the mentally “ill”. Not every mentally ill person is violent. A few are, but most of us really want to be left to just be.
to be allowed to be who I am without judgement and conditions and withholding of affection. I do not wish to be labeled mentally ill, and that’s all that I am to other people. I am not a person with a disease. I am the disease. Or that is how some people see it, and it upsets me because I value their opinion. What does it mean to value something anyway? I already know what it means to “devalue” something or some one.
Unfortunately if you are defined by your illness alone, you are already devalued as something imperfect in a world where the pursuit of perfection is the only pursuit worth anything. There’s that “value” concept again. Never have been able to figure out how people assign value to things, objects, other people……
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
i have had it. I have reached the end of my rope. I cannot stand people today. I tried to
Ever have a day/week/life like this?
do something that I thought would be appreciated by an certain individual yesterday. Turns out the road to hell really is paved with good intentions, but I had no idea it came with undeserved criticism, and a 15 minute long chastising discussion (one sided) about how what I had done was completely wrong. WTF!!?!?!??!
Then, to add insult to injury, said person said they recognize that our thought processes were different: first and foremost because of my “illness,” it is always my fucking illness first, then other reasons such as different backgrounds, different life experiences, etc. But, always the “illness” first and always foremost. Yeah, I have had a much harder life than said individual. But, I, in many ways “chose” that lifestyle based on things that happened to me when I was much younger. Much, much younger. Like barely 16.
I did not ask for the event that occurred and I was in no way old enough to process it. So, I buried it with drugs and alcohol. I did not know what else to do. (There goes the fucking phone again. I am going to rip them out of the wall). When I brought up that snorting speed and cocaine for about 6 years isn’t real healthy for the lungs either (not to mention you tend to chain smoke while high on stimulants), said individual says to me: “You know you always try to compare your experiences like they are similar to others’.” Snorting coke and speed is not good for any part of the body involved. You snort the stuff up your nose…..not good for septum and sinuses. Since you are snorting it, it goes straight into your lungs. That’s fucking healthy, and then you chain smoke. How is that different than smoking for 40 years? Fuck this person. Who the hell do they think they are? Who the fuck died and made them capable of walking on water while the rest of us drown?
So, said conversation (again one sided) basically went something like this. No thank you for trying to do something nice, just you know I cannot smoke commercial brand cigarettes because of the additives. I have to smoke pure tobacco. Said individual has been smoking since I was born, maybe they should quit if brand name cigarettes are going to have such a negative effect. Smoking any cigarette is going to be bad for your throat, lungs, mouth, etc. Then said individual pointed out that when they bought cigarettes for us (yes, I took up smoking after then “incident when I was 16”), that they always got the ones with no additives even if it meant driving further. Well, as people who read my blog know, I totaled my car for the New Year (January 5th). So,I have to drive another car that I am not entirely comfortable with (it is huge compared to my old car.) So, I went as far as I could before the anxiety set in.
I am so fucking sorry I tried to do something that I thought would be appreciated. Won’t happen again. Trust me. I may make mistakes all the time (due to my “illness”), but I do learn from some of them. This one I learned from. Good intentions are not appreciated. I feel taken for granted, I feel like I do not ever want to try to do anything nice for this person ever again.
Oh, and then there is what I found in my email yesterday from my Internet company. Apparently,I downloaded a “film” back in December from some company DBA as “Devil‘s Films”. First of all, I would not be looking at “films” produced by such a company: I find that I lose interest in about a nanosecond, and they are not my preferred viewing material. Apparently, this was a niche film involving two “grannies” getting down with each other. WTF would I be doing watching that kind of crap? I am 41 years old. Not 65. Were I not to be completely bored by the genre in general, I would prefer younger people, with a plot that actually tells a story….. not just two or more people doing their thing with each other. Now that I have finished raving and ranting about that, here comes the real problem. The account is in my name, with my email, my address. I “own” the account. It doesn’t matter what someone else does with it, I am the responsible party. I am the one who could get fined, I am the one who could be criminally prosecuted. Not the dipshit that downloaded the “film” in the first place. And, then said jackass says, “I don’t even have the video anymore. It was boring so I deleted it”.
Does not matter if the “film is still on the computer or not. The point is that it was downloaded in the first place. And the Internet company knows it. It came from my router’s IP address, it has my router’s MAC address, it has everything associated with the router’s configuration. My router and my IP and MAC addresses. That’s how it was traced in the first place. I am not a techno-idiot. I know how to trace people from their IP addresses and the MAC address of the computer. I can pin it down to a physical address, in whatever town, city, state. I can pull up satellite maps of the area. This is how the company discovered the copyright infringement.
For crying out loud, if you are going to risk the fine and/or jail time, why download two grannies getting it on. If that’s what you are into, you are married to a person in the wrong age group. Even at 41, I am considered in this realm as “mature,” meaning I am not 20 something. Find a new fucking hobby (pardon the bad pun). Like, oh I do not know, paying attention to your wife who is very close to leaving you, or at least, getting what she doesn’t get at home somewhere else.
I have never cheated on a lover before, but I am getting damn close. I get no attention, no affection, it is a given that I will clean the kitchen and cook dinner. No thank you’s. Those are implied. It may be implied, but it is nice to hear once in a while. I am so close to ending this relationship so I don’t end up cheating because I have very strong feelings about that. My father cheated on my mom with a family “friend” for about 6 years until they both divorced and then married each other. So, I have a thing about cheating. It is wrong. Break up first if you think you are going to the dark side. That way no one gets seriously hurt, and there is no having to forgive and forget. I am that close. But, considering what my mom went through, I just cannot do it. I will divorce first. It’s not like this is a marriage anyway. He sleeps on the couch and has for about 3 months. I sleep in the bed, and I won’t let him sleep there anymore. It has been about the same amount of time since we had sex (I know, overshare), but it is relevant to my wanting to cheat. I don’t understand.
My “illness” has not popped up recently which said person claims is why they are sleeping on the couch and we are not engaged in “normal” marital relations. I am 41 freaking years old. I still have a very healthy sex drive, and I do not even get kisses or hugs. I am talking zero physical affection. And, he wonders why I don’t put on my lingerie anymore. It such an obvious answer. The last few times I have tried that, I got shot down in flames, and felt like such an idiot. Since I do not feeling like an idiot for trying to initiate sexual relations with my husband, I stopped. No reaction, no sexy lingerie. That’s the way it works. What is the point if you get no reaction? You just sit there all dolled up while he watches PBS Newshour or some shit like that. It is humiliating. I am just going to let him have his “fantasy” amateur porn stars. They seem to do more for him than I can.
Besides, It is not like I am ugly. Quite the opposite. I am not beautiful, but I am very pretty. Coke bottle figure, a little more voluptuous than I would like to be, but not bad. I am well proportioned, I have eyes that change from grey to green, I have a large chest (which he claims he has always liked in women; not me apparently). Basically, I have no problem finding men. Most women don’t because men are, in general (not always), interested in one thing from women, and it isn’t philosophical conversation. Robin Williams once said that men only have enough blood to run one head at a time. True.
So, I am completely pissed off while at the same time really sad. Mixed-episode? I do not think so. I think everything in my little world has collapsed, and I am not handling it as well as I could be. I am getting angry, I am getting depressed, I am feeling unloved, unwanted, undesirable, not sexy (even though I know some guys who would disagree, just not the main one), I do not even know why I spend so much time doing my make-up (unless it is to out-do other women; this is likely. Women are catty like that). Continue reading →
I never thought the above words would describe my life. Alone, yes, but that was alone by myself. As in no roommate, no live-in boyfriend, just cats. Which if I think about it makes me seem creepy in a way. But, seriously, it was me and my pets. I was not alone and with someone. Now I am alone but married. And, that makes no sense to me. I think (possibly paranoia speaking here) that he intentionally keeps different hours than I do so he only sees me for a portion of his waking hours. And, even then, he does not see me. He is glued to his computer in his little second or third bedroom “office.” I do not know what he does in there, and I really do not want to know. It would probably just make me mad. You know he and I have not shared any couples time in almost a month? We are not a couple. We are two entities who collided like particles in a particle accelerator. We ran into each other, meshed and decided getting married seemed to be the thing to do. I do not think that particles that have been smashed apart or fused together by an accelerator should be getting married. It just isn’t smart, level headed, or rational. It is the action of two teenagers that think they are madly in love….. the key word here is “think.” So, I thought I was in love with him, and he thought he was in love with me, and he cannot demonstrate physical affection, so, maybe I was in love with the idea of being in love. Maybe he was in love with the idea of being in love. It is probably both of our faults that we find ourselves in this mess.
I do not think I am in love with him anymore, and if I am, it is been buried so deeply down in the recesses of my mind that I do not know how to dredge the feelings up any more. He has hurt me way too many times, broken too many promises, and gotten angry with me for asking him to take me to the psych hospital; like I really wanted to lock myself up voluntarily. Hell, no, I hate that place, but he began yelling at me that he was sick of my “attention seeking” behavior. I was not fucking kidding about needing to go to the funny farm. I was having tea with the Mad Hatter and the Red Queen had lost her head by the time I asked. So, he yelled at me that he was tired of the behavior. Now, I just do not talk. I stopped eating after he told me I had gained weight. So, as the old saying goes “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.” Now, he has a silent wife who is slowly starving herself, and contemplating the pill bottle game again. Be very careful what you ask for either out loud, through your thoughts or through your actions.
I was told I was getting fat, I stopped eating. I was told I was “attention seeking,” I shut the fuck up, I get yelled at, I just take it now as part of his flawed personality. Not that I walk on or above water, I certainly do not, but at least I do not act like I do.
I have become untouchable for reasons unknown, but i suspect it is the weight issue. A whole bunch of people have noticed that I have lost weight except, you can take your wild stab in the dark here, him. I know he has noticed but, for the love of god, say something about it. It isn’t hard to open your mouth and heart and pay someone a compliment. It’s not like he ran into an evil serial killer clown that super-glued his lips shut. He is capable of giving a compliment, or even a simple out of the blue “I Love You” would be nice. But I am untouchable, he won’t touch me at all. Its like he’s afraid to catch cooties or something. It is situations like this that drive people to cheating or divorce. I am not something that can thrive without attention. He gives his plants more attention than he does to me. I could be lying dead on the bathroom floor for hours before he would think to look for me, or at least, that is the way it feels to me. But, I am the sick one, the one with the mood problem, therefore it is probably paranoid thinking on my part. It seems like my emotions never steer me in the correct way, but my gut instincts have always been pretty good, and right now they are telling me that he doesn’t love me anymore, doesn’t want have sex with me any more, that touching me in any way, shape or form is out of the question. I am sorry but that does not work for me. I need to feel loved and wanted, and apparently he cannot provide that for me any more.
He used to be very affectionate, and then the love of his life died, and that was the end of that. No more attention or affection for his wife. He died at the same time that she did. Her name was Grace, and apparently they had a love affair for the ages. That was really the end of his ability to show love and affection toward any body. I think when this lease is up, we should go our own separate ways. I am not getting what I need out of the relationship, and apparently neither is he.
I feel like I am living in a caste system. And, I am at the bottom of the system where the untouchables live. I certainly did not ever think that my life could be summed up in three words: Alone, Untouchable and Unloved. I never thought that could happen, but I guess that is the problem with saying never.
I guess I’ll go dishes since that was a maid does…..well, except Arnold Schwanegger’s 🙂
A Bipolar Journey Through The Rabbit Hole 