When I was small, like about 3 or 4, my father frequently played the banjo. He was, in my little girl opinion, very good at it. Now that I am an adult and having tried the violin in school, I have to say my father is musically inclined in a major way. But, anyway, I got involved in a “comment” discussion about songs remembered from childhood, instruments that were tried, singing in general, and memories of those songs. One of the songs my father was trying to tackle was “Dueling Banjos”…..yes, I realize you need a second banjo for this song, but he was working on both parts. So, this post in the category, “Music on Mondays” from the blog Russel Ray Photos reminded me of this one bluegrass song that I have dearly loved since being a little kid when things were simpler and happier. So, here is “Dueling Banjos.” See, Bipolar people aren’t scary. We are just a little more eccentric than other people 🙂 This was a hard video to find…but maybe that is because I am picky…..the kid in this video can pick. So, “Dueling Banjos” by Glen Campbell and Carl Jackson from 1973.
His Main Bike Looked a Little Like This ~ 1937 HD Knucklehead
There is something that I want to write. I can feel it forming in my brain, I can sense it coming out the tips of my fingers, but I can’t seem to find the words. Anyone who knows me well knows that me being at a loss for words is a rare occurrence. It all started this morning before I woke up. I was dreaming of someone whom I love very much, and will probably love in absentia for the rest of my life. It was not the greatest dream. I could see him, but I could not reach him or talk to him. Something was preventing that. Space, time, maybe? I have not seen him since I got married, and to this day, considering what happened in my marriage, I do not know why I chose my ex-husband over this man who never judged me, never had total losses of temper regarding my mood swings (he just held me, and made things okay)….pardon me, I have to stop and cry for a bit. Damn tears came out of nowhere, I am going to have to buy some waterproof mascara for days like these.
Okay, tears dried up. I have no idea exactly where that came from. It is like the chances of rain in my city; it can thunder and blow and have lightening breaking across the sky and the incredibly dark clouds, and not a drop will fall, or the downpour will be so torrential that flood warnings are issued and we are warned to stay out of the arroyos and run-off ditches. That’s what feeling melancholy is like for me. Sometimes not a tear will come to my eye even when by all rights they should, and then sometimes they come out of nowhere to leave black streaks beneath my eyes (hence the waterproof mascara.)
I am lamenting a bad choice. I think that is what it is. I made the wrong decision, and am now regretting it as it was a decision that left me open to a man that did not really care about me (both as a person, period, and as a person with an affective disorder), was abusive in very subtle ways that left me questioning everything about my self as a woman and as a person, was incredibly critical and considered it constructive while I considered it simply criticizing for the sake of being contrary. The man that got left behind was never abusive, never critical, never judgmental, didn’t need to understand my mental issues to be a kind and loving friend; he just inherently understood me, and that I was different than other people. He loved me because I was me. I would wager he still does as he does not strike me as someone who loves easily or lightly. That is something we have in common; I do not love (or trust) easily or lightly. To this day, I wonder how my ex managed to pull the wool over my eyes until it was too late, and I was stuck with the creature he became after marrying. I did see my lover-friend once after I made the mistake of getting married. It was at a bike run that I drove four hours to get to just to see him one last time.Â
There is something that bound us to one another that I cannot put in words. It simply was. I told him one night after we had been out drinking beer and listening to live blues at some seedy bar that I needed to tell him something and he wasn’t allowed to think I was crazy. I told him late that night that I loved him, and his response (here we go with the tears again) to me was ” I have loved you for a long time.” That was the only time we said “I love you” to each other, and it never had to be said again. It was just something that was understood. I do not remember my ex ever telling me straight out that he loved me. It was always round about in some way, but it never came out as “I love you.” It was never to the point. I think that he loved the idea of me, but that he didn’t really love me as a real person with strengths and flaws and quirks.Â
The odd thing is the two men were fairly close in age, but they could not have had more different outlooks on life. Whereas one told me the last time he had use for a tie was in 1967 to tie his bedroll to his bike before taking off for Mexico, the other lamented the fact that he had no real reason to wear any of his extensive and expensive collection of ties. How did I make the choice to abandon my true lover-friend for my ex? Or maybe the question ought to be how did my ex convince me he was someone he was not; that he was open-minded, quirky, silly, serious, funny, liked the same things I did, had a similar sense of humor, liked to make me blush with some comment that usually took me a while to figure out completely, liked to tell me when I was walking to “stop fast”, wished he could play blues on the guitar and had since he was a boy, and was basically a complete pervert (but in a good way, not a damaging way?) That’s the question I cannot answer, and that is what I ponder frequently when I wake up dreaming of my lover-friend.Â
Well, I survived the anniversary. It was a different sort of survival than other break-ups I have experienced. I didn’t get this (depressed is the wrong word, although I did get a prescription for 3 months of anti-depressants) moody when I broke up with other boyfriends and one fiance. Somehow, even though the marriage only lasted about 4 years, I felt more like a failure than when I broke up with my fiance of 9 years. I have been doing a lot of thinking on why that might be, and finally came to the conclusion that I was blamed frequently during the marriage for it’s shortcomings. Usually, it was the fact that I have Bipolar disorder that was blamed. I cannot help that, but somehow, I felt that I should have been less “me” and more of someone who does not live with an Affective disorder. In my rational mind, I do realize that my ex-husband never really did try to understand the disorder, and that is what lay at fault was his lack of understanding, and the emotionally abusive nature of the relationship. I always felt that I was not quite the person he thought he had married, and he tried rather hard to “remold” me into someone that more closely resembled the actors in his little “fetish” movies (I do not need to rehash all of that. There are many posts about that issue).Â
Being blamed for something you cannot control but can only manage to the best of your ability is terribly disheartening. When you have a “severe” psychiatric illness, you already feel different than other people, but to be essentially blamed for having it in the first place is not just disheartening, it threatens your self-image, your ego, your self-esteem, and other essential parts of who you think you are. You become your illness because so much emphasis is placed on it. I was not diagnosed in my 20’s when I was engaged for 9 years so the break-up was mutual and fairly friendly. Somehow the diagnosis made this one worse. I truly felt that it was solely my fault that the marriage didn’t work because I had to be hospitalized once (he got very angry when I asked him to drive me to the hospital; I didn’t understand that) because I was playing the “line up the pill bottles and try to decide if there is enough to overdose” game. I was trying to get myself to a safe place. I had already taken too much of my Seroquel and was falling asleep when I asked. He just yelled at me about being sick of all the drama, so I told him I would drive myself (about 45 miles) to the hospital even though I knew I would probably die in a car accident on the way. And, so the relationship went for 4 years. After a month of pondering, IÂ have decided that my Bipolar was just a convenient way for him to take no responsibility for the failure of the relationship. And, I am still not sure about that.Â
This has always been one of my favorite James Taylor songs, and with the learning of a very good and long-time friend’s serious illness, I have been a bit melancholy as of late.
From confusion comes opportunity. (Photo credit: wasabicube)
So, I am not feeling particularly bad about divorcing my ex-husband right now. In fact, we belong to the same Buddhist community and he introduced to this form of Buddhism. Our community is divided across the city into smaller groups or Districts. I am now and have been the Women’s District leader for the group he had practiced with since moving here about 8 years ago. Upon the divorce, he made the choice (thank the powers that be) to move to another District because I sure was not going to give up my group because of him, although I did try for other reasons. But, I was shot down. So, at any rate, for the past month or so, I have been in and out of a fairly intense mixed episode. I cry at the drop of a pin, I am manic as all hell with the motivation of a seriously depressed person. It’s cool. Fucking rocks (pardon my French)……the problem is I still have to do shit.
Actually, sitting here listening to Pearl Jam’s “Ten”, the song “Alive” is playing. Always one of my favorites, ever since it was a new song (yes, I am an aging Gen-Xer, and was around to see the very beginning of alternative rock and Grunge.I am getting old…er). Anyway, this particular lyric has always gotten to me, probably because I have been Bipolar for 20+ years and did not know it. At any rate, here’s the lyric: “…..Is there something wrong, she said. Well, of course there is. You’re still alive, she said. Oh, and do I deserve to be? Is that the question? And, if so….if so… who answers…who answers….” (Pearl Jam, Ten “Alive”) For some reason, this lyric has always touched a nerve. Maybe because I don’t feel worthy of life, worthy of happiness (my marriage certainly validated that feeling), worthy of a happy life. Somewhere along the path of my growing up, I decided that psychological torture (both by self and by others) seemed to define the “norm” of my life. This is how confusion has been reached. Confusion is not a state I find my self in often. At least not about emotions. I just choose to not have them if I can possibly avoid them.Â
However, confusion and complete discombobulation is where I find my self. I do not like it. I do not enjoy this. I choose not to feel for a reason. Feeling has caused me nothing but pain over my lifetime. I do not hold much hope for the same reason. Every time I have dared to hope, it has gone dramatically and catastrophically awry. I seem to find my self in a position where I am actually feeling bad that I divorced my ex. Neither of us put much into marriage counseling (it, I believe was too far gone by then), and as a consequence we paid co-payments for psychologists that couldn’t help by that point. Initially, I thought, he was falling asleep on the couch because he was staying up too late, and then, it gradually dawned. He didn’t want to sleep in the same bed as me. I have these questions that goes around and around and around in my mind: was it his porn addiction or my having Manic Depression that caused the rift? Was it a combination of both? Was it my reaction to what he saw as normal and healthy? He blamed the whole thing on me, always telling me that I was all talk and no action (I had actually been thinking of divorce for a year or so).Â
Then, the “deal-breaker” fight happened and he threatened me with bodily harm. Lethal bodily harm. I have PTSD. I have an intense fight or flight mechanism; it depends on the situation which one steps up. I also have a fairly “distinctive” career as a substance abuser (see post: “Self-Medication” in the archives). When he said that I was lucky there were no lethal weapons in the house, he was clearly thinking about guns. Idiot. I felt this really scary calm come over me. I have only felt it a few times, and it always involved a threat to me of some sort. I just looked at him, and found him pathetic. I, mean, how dare he threaten my life? As if I was going to let him hurt me? So, I looked at him much like you look at a specimen of algae in Biology class. He had become a non-entity; something to be disposed of. I looked around the room from my position on the sofa, and I could clearly see at least 10 lethal objects not to mention the knives in the kitchen. I asked very calmly what did he mean there were no lethal weapons in the house, that I could see about 10 from where I sat. He was clearly out of his element. I had been a fairly violent child, and it got even worse as my substance use led me further and further down a very dangerous path littered with human land mines. I told him the conversation was over, and I was going to bed. It was 2:00 am. I spent an hour trying to fall asleep, and in that hour decided that I was leaving. He really fucked up when he threatened me because a vital part of my self shut down, and part of that part was my love for him.
Which gets me to where I am now. Confused. And emotional. I feel bad for divorcing him because I know he thought I would put up with his shit forever. No, sorry, even my self esteem has a point at which I say no more. I mean, he clearly was hiding from me. He would spend all day locked away with his computer and his porn. Didn’t leave much room for me. So, I filed the first of the paperwork 4 days before my birthday and one month after our anniversary. I have always had a great sense of timing. I think what is bothering me now is that I just don’t feel that bad about it. In my eyes, I was protecting my self from further damage. I isolate the word “self” for a reason. It was the “self” that was being attacked and damaged. I have spent far too much time in therapy, in the hospital, getting medically “stable” to watch it all go down in flames. Maybe that makes me a cold person, but I do not think so. It makes me a survivor, and it makes me someone who wants a life. I feel bad for him, but, at the same time, I do not feel anything. That’s new; I have never just not felt anything. Maybe its because it is the Holidays, and I feel so much that it feels like numbness.
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.
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.Â
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 →
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.Â
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
So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue sky’s from pain.
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade Your heroes for ghosts? Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze? Cold comfort for change? And did you exchange A walk on part in the war For a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here. We’re just two lost souls Swimming in a fish bowl, Year after year, Running over the same old ground. And how we found The same old fears. Wish you were here.
Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd song) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A Bipolar Journey Through The Rabbit Hole 