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 tend to have better memories of my “formative” years before things got all weird in my family, and between me and my Dad through music and the lyrics. I am in a reminiscing mode. Sorry 🙂 My Dad loved the Beatles, and I happen to really like The White Album, so here we have “Dear Prudence”
Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play
Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day
The sun is up, the sky is blue
It’s beautiful and so are you
Dear Prudence won’t you come out to play
Dear Prudence open up your eyes
Dear Prudence see the sunny skies
The wind is low the birds will sing
That you are part of everything
Dear Prudence won’t you open up your eyes?
Look around round
Look around round round
Look around
Dear Prudence let me see you smile
Dear Prudence like a little child
The clouds will be a daisy chain
So let me see you smile again
Dear Prudence won’t you let me see you smile?
Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play
Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day
The sun is up, the sky is blue
It’s beautiful and so are you
Dear Prudence won’t you come out to play
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 →
English: Angelina Jolie at the Cannes Film festival (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
His last girlfriend was a bipolar as well, but he met her when she was manic and at her most charming. I was neither manic nor depressed when he met me. I was surfing a gentle sine wave. I was riding my bike every day, swimming in the pool for the rest of the afternoon, I had a life that I had carved out for myself with a lot of hard work and introspection. I had friends. Good friends that I now do not have. I do not know if this is the illness biting me in the ass, or if her has me so isolated from every one that people just stopped coming around.
He judges me on a daily basis. Because he is arrogant enough to point out that women/girls in big cities take the time to fix their hair just so, and make their lips look like Angelina Jolie after a collagen injection. I do not want to look like that. I want to look like me, just enhanced. I do not want to look like Mick Jagger. But, he says that is what turns him on (thank you Internetporn for warping my husband.) It didn’t used to be an issue. But, I still continue to be held to standards of female beauty that I just do not agree with. I have achieved a compromise with the all important lip liner. I just have to say that if he expects me to try to turn him on, he needs to bathe more than once a month. Why should I bother trying to be a porno slut if he can’t even keep his hygiene under control? That turns me off, completely.
I have hit the point where I really do not care if I turn him on or not. I am comfortable with the way I look. At the risk of sounding vain, I am not an unattractive woman. I know for a fact that I am beautiful. Both inside and out. Besides, having sex with him after nearly three months is going to feel like a one night stand. He’ll get up and go sleep on the couch, and I will fall asleep in the bed. It has been this way for months. He just refuses to sleep in the same bed with me. Oh well, benefit for me. I have less back pain than I did before 🙂I can just feel my self losing faith in what is supposed to be a partnership, and a loving marriage. Granted, I can understand his position. He has inherited my anger and volatile temper along with a whole lot of hurt from life, in general. And, yes, I do lash out at him even though he has nothing to do with past issues, but the Internet Porn is all his doing. That is something he has done all on his own, and it has changed him from the man I used to know. He continues to view it for hours on end even though he knows that it hurts me and that I do not like it.
What happened to quid pro qou? He gives up some of the time he spends with the porn sluts, and keeps his hygiene up, and he might see a change in my attitude. but, as it stands now, nothing is going to change. i cannot change him, I can only change myself. And, he may not like that new self. I am half inclined to go with my mom today to file divorce papers today. I have rarely admitted defeat before I try to succeed, but this marriage seems hopeless. I am the only one who has to change, I am the only one causing problems between us (ummm, hello, hours on the Internet looking at other naked women, and watching them do anything; that one’s on him.) It just isn’t going to work between us. He is a big city guy stuck in a Southwestern “town” (never mind that there are 750,000 people living here.) I am never going to be able to be what he has decided he likes women to look like. I am who I am, and I am what I am. I have no apologies for that, I do not regret anything that I have done or has transpired to make me who I am. What I think is sad is that none of this had to happen. He could have stopped the porn stuff, and he could have been less adamant that I look like a big city girl. I am not from a big city, and therefore, I do take care with my makeup, but I have never had anyone with such an adamant and unwavering attitude that I must look like the big city women. I am fine with the way I look. Other men seem appreciative. He’s the only one who is dissatisfied with the way I look.And that argument is part of a larger whole of dysfunction in this relationship. it really isn’t about lipliner, it is about appreciation, and he might get what he wants if he would just bathe more often. This whole argument is about two people not wanting to do what it takes to make this work.
I am not the only one who has to change, he has his own issues that he should be working on, not focusing on my mental health issues. He says that I spend all my time thinking about my “illness,” I can guarantee you that he spends far more time on it than I do. Having Bipolar Disorder has just become part of my life; he’s the one who is hung up on it, and mentions nearly every day. And using lip liner is not going to help. As I said before, why should I bother when his basic hygiene is so bad? Why should I turn myself into one of his “fantasy” women if he won’t keep himself clean?I am giving up. I admit defeat. I admit that this failed because I was too defensive, too abrasive, and not enough of a whole lot of other things. I just cannot do this anymore. This argument is about respect, and compassion/appreciation for the other party. I have tried. I have failed.
English: Fun day out with Granddad Two happy children and their grandfather run through thick snow just inside the entrance to Ickworth Park, at Horringer. Behind is the parish church of the village, St Leonard’s. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
What a way to start the holiday season. My grandma (mother’s mom) has been slowly declining in health for some time now. She was getting tired often, had very little appetite, lived alone, and had congestive heart failure. She was on a number of medications for high blood pressure, a diuretic for water retention, cumidin to thin her blood. Common medications for people with blood pressure problems, and very common among older people. But, she was hanging in there despite the fact that my Granddad (her husband of 50 years) had passed away in 1985; also in November. In fact, it was November 5th, 1985. I was 14 so even though I understood I would never see him in physical form again, I think I was too young to process his rather sudden death. I did not cry for his passing until I was 18, and it really hit me one day that this headstrong, opinionated, bull-headed man who had helped my parents take care of my sister and myself was really gone.
Due to a medication (Oxycodone) that my grandma had to take for pain due to a fracture in one of her vertebrae, my grandma could no longer be left alone, especially at night. So, the decision was made to move her into a hospice where someone would be available around the clock. She was moved out of the house where she had lived for as far back as I can remember (and I have a memory like an elephant), the house where she had raised two of her four children, where she and my Granddad would baby sit me and my sister if my parents wanted to take a vacation sans children, where I remember big Thanksgiving dinners, and many Christmases. I remember that she and my granddad were married on the 4th of July, and every year the whole family would get together for food and fireworks. She kept a lunchbox with toys in it in the hall closet, and even though I knew perfectly well where to find it, I would always ask, and she’d tell me it was off yonder. If it weren’t for her, I would have no idea where yonder is. Not that it is a specific place, but I will always know where yonder is thanks to her. She was a very strong woman, said very little but when she did speak, you listened. Believe me you listened. She was keenly observant of everything going on around her. It was really hard to slip under her radar. She never thought of herself as a smart person like my father’s mother who had a Bachelor’s In Mathematics from USC and was a brilliant oil painter. She felt that her life had been wasted because she wasn’t as educated as my other grandmother. She also wasn’t nuts like my other grandmother (she had untreated Manic Depression, thanks for the genes.) What she failed to realize was that she had the hardest, most rewarding and painful, most important job on the planet. She was a mother. And, judging by the way my aunt and mom and one uncle turned out, she did a damn fine job of raising her children. but, she couldn’t see that being a parent, especially a mother is the most important thing that someone can do with their lives. She may not have smiled as often as she should have, and I do not think I ever heard her laugh. Maybe, I did and I do not remember.
When I had my first car accident and could not find my parents (I was about 15), I called her, and she and my Uncle Steve came to get me. I remember being about 18, and living in my very first apartment. I had a kitten named Faustus. One day, I came home from work and I couldn’t find my kitten. She had somehow slipped out when I left that day. I finally located my kitten and she was covered in oil, holding one hind leg up, missing the fur on her ears and eyelids. She had either been in someone’s engine or she narrowly missed getting squashed by a car. It didn’t really matter. She was alive, but hurt badly. I had no money to take her to the pet ER, and I tried my parents (once again), but my Dad was out of town and my mother was working or something. I couldn’t find them so once again I called my grandma. I needed $80 to take my kitten to the vet. Now, my grandma never liked pets; they were messy, but she just happened to have the money that I needed to take my kitten in. I drove to her house holding my injured Faustus, and tried to operate a standard transmission with one hand. That’s a trick. So, she gave me the money and told me to come back for dinner when they were done with my kitten. The vets had sedated my cat and put her in a box. Even though I can’t remember there ever being an animal in her house, she let me bring my very groggy little kitten in to her house in the box. It turned out that my cat’s hind leg was completely severed at the joint. But, even though she had no use for pets, she still let me bring my cat in the house because it was winter time, it was night, and it was cold. I can still see her in her house that night. She always had this way of making everything warm and alright, even if every thing was wrong. She was probably one of the people on this planet that I respected and loved unconditionally. I always knew I could count on her for help, and if it was within her power to do so, she would help. She used to make me gifts of canned and dry goods because she knew that I was struggling financially and she had grown up during the Depression so she knew what being dirt poor was like. She was funny like that. She gave of herself and never expected anything in return.
She was such a strong, dignified, dedicated, and loving person. I feel like I was privileged to be born to her daughter. She taught me so much about inner strength, and just dealing with the situation as it was. There was not any thing else to do, and in her own, very quiet way, she passed that value along to her children, and her grand children, and her great grand children even though they won’t be able to remember much about her. They are all very young; about the same age as my cousins were when granddad died. If I was 14, then my oldest cousin would have been about 9. The great-grandchildren (except my sister’s) are all much younger than that. They will never really know how this woman in her quiet but thoughtful way taught her children and grandchildren how to live life.
Life was never easy for her and my granddad. They had four children and he worked construction jobs, and she took in people’s ironing and laundry to help make the ends meet. The family would move to where ever there was work for my granddad. It could not have been easy, but she went through life never complaining. She just accepted what was, and had faith that it would get better, and she got through it. I think people born in the early part of the 20th century had more strength to live life on life’s terms than those of us born later in the century. We all want it fixed or done now. We are a generation of people who want instant gratification, but there is so much more character and dignity and grace in learning how to live life no matter what gets thrown at you.
My family lost some one very special today. It does not matter one bit if she did not go to college, or was a brilliant painter or writer. She was a role model for how to live life on life’s terms. You do what you need to do in order to live no matter how menial it may seem. You raise your children to respect their elders, you raise them to respect people from all walks of life, to have compassion when someone is struggling, and to love and give without expecting anything in return. This is what she left my parents and her other children with. And, in their own ways they passed on what my grandma and my granddad taught them. Work hard, love and appreciate your family and friends, have thanks for what you do have instead of constantly yearning for what you do not have. Sometimes, no matter how hard it may seem, life may be all that you have. I know how important life is. Even as a treated Bipolar, I have tried several times to take my life, but I always clung to life in the end and would call 911. Apparently, I am not ready to die yet.
This was a woman who accepted me for who I am, the things I have been, and loved me anyway. She weathered the drug abuse, the drinking, the mental illness that makes me so moody, all the things that my own mother had to cope with as well. I wish now (20/20 hindsight) that I had taken more time to find out about her. I always meant to, but somehow never got around to it. I guess I thought she would still be here when I finally had grown up enough to see how amazing she was. I thought she would live forever, I guess. Magical thinking on my part, but when you are in your 20s and 30s, you still have this notion that you’ll never get old and neither will the people around you. But, that isn’t the way it works.
You hit 40, and you realize that time does not stop because you want it to. You age, and so does everyone around you. You come to realize that time will continue and you will age and so will those you love. You are born, you live your life to the best of your ability, and then you become old and eventually everyone dies. It is a cycle that never ends. Life will always lead to death. It is what you do and how you treat others in between that matters. My grandma understood that with her heart, and as a result, was an incredible person. I will miss her dearly. She was like my other mom. I only hope that I can continue to improve myself so that I am like her when I am old, and I can die with no regrets. Why she loved me so dearly, I will never know. But, I am glad she did. Even though I am the odd one out in the family. When life becomes really stressful, just paint your nails, dye your hair that color you always wanted, try a different color of eye shadow, soak in the tub, but above all, be nice to yourself and others. Good night, Grandma.
Velma Pauline Hatfield Varley: born 9/6/1915 and died 11/17/2012.
Have you ever just lost someone but you do not know when and where? It is so confusing. One minute this person is a part of your life, and one day, you wake up and they’re gone (either in body or spirit or both). It is usually someone significant to you in some way, shape, or form like a significant other, or a parent, or a close friend.
Well, the other day while at my therapist, we were discussing the concept of loss. I was mentioning a few people that I have lost over the years (but I knew they were gone), and she said very quietly, “Your father.” He hasn’t sent a Christmas card for several years or a birthday card.
I started to notice about three or four years ago that there seemed to be a misunderstanding on his end about the nature of this illness. He seems to think it can be cured, but all it really does is hide behind highly and very finely tweaked medication. He had been helping me out financially with insurance costs and Medicare and co- payments. In fact, he had been sending much more than I actually needed. Now he has simply reduced the amount to the point where it covers Medicare and the insurance premium and one psychiatrist visit and one therapist visit.
What I cannot figure out is if I lost him due to the illness or because I did not turn out the way he expected his first born child would turn out. All i know is that having thought about it for some time now, i think I lost him a long time ago while I was still a teenager. At some point, I must have disappointed him greatly by either not accomplishing something, the friends I chose for myself, my tendency toward self-medication, or something. What matters to me is I cannot pin down when I lost him. What really matters is that I did lose him.
I do not know what I did to deserve being cut out of my father’s life. He and my mother split up when I was around 19 or 20. He had been having an affair (not to mention he abused alcohol the same way I did drugs, so if that was the reason, it sure is hypocritical) for about 6 years with another married woman. They both divorced and married each other before the ink was dry. So, he is no saint either although he would definitely have you believe differently.
The only solid reason I can come up with is that he was raised primarily as an only child (my aunt is 14 years his senior) by an untreated, undiagnosed Manic Depressive, and i remind him of her. Or, it could stem from an incident when I was 18 months old, yes you read that right, and I told him I hated him. How can an 18 month old child understand the concept of hate? They haven’t even gotten around to “like” yet. You can only understand one if you have experienced the other. It is Yin and Yang. Dark with light, happy with sad, night with day. The world is a dichotomy. So, apparently, he took this to heart, or so I have been told. I have also been told in my younger years that I reminded family members of her. I do not think they meant it as a compliment.
So, I have been very confused about why my dad abandoned me so late in life. Most of the time, fathers take off when the kids are young. But, I suspect the feelings are the similar. You wonder what you did or didn’t do, what you didn’t do well enough, you wonder if it was just you being, you wonder, why they left, you are hurt and angry all at the same time and this, unfortunately, can carry over into other relationships. You’ll sabotage a perfectly good relationship just so you can leave first, and not be the one who gets left. I have done this just so I don’t have to deal with abandonment issues (thanks Dad). You end up with the attitude that everyone will leave you sooner or later. It is not just in your mind, it is in your heart, especially if you were left with no real reason as to why you were abandoned. You just know you have been, and that it hurts and makes you angry. This is why some kids act out, others withdraw, adults will throw themselves into their work. If you have work to throw yourself into. If you don’t, you blog 🙂
Maybe that’s it. Maybe I acted out because I was a very unhappy child, and later, a very unhappy teen. Maybe that’s why he left me emotionally (he is into emotionally damaging people). This is not to say he did not do his best, I am sure he did. He just could not get a grip on me. If you told me something was one way, I’d tell you it was exactly the opposite mainly to annoy you and amuse myself. Then, when I was a young teenager, something very nasty happened to me, and I became impossible to control. I would take off for days at a time, I tried to run away from home at least three times, I began to run with an older crowd (mainly Deadheads and hippie types), I began to use drugs. i was impossible, and I was uncontrollable, and my father really does not like people to be out of his control. Maybe that’s it. I don’t know. I just know it hurts to know my father took off emotionally for no legitimate reason that I can think of. Except maybe that I am Manic Depressive, and he just cannot handle it. Which is stupid. He doesn’t even live in the state, so he doesn’t have to deal with it. I do, and my mother does, and my husband does. Or, maybe he’s just an asshole. That would be a pretty simple, down and dirty assessment.
I have such vivid memories of traveling across the country and hearing these guys coming through the speakers of the camper’s 8-track. Life was a lot simpler back then:
We are finally about to start marriage counseling today. I really do not know how I feel about this. I am very apprehensive about the whole endeavor because he has this tendency to blame everything on me. Like he walks on water. Everything that is wrong with the marriage is my fault because I am mentally ill, therefore, everything must be my fault. What he doesn’t understand is that his own problem with depression makes me sicker. He withdraws into this dark world of Internet porn, and he thinks that’s okay. When in reality, he is paying no attention to me whatsoever, and he won’t have sex with me, half the time he won’t sleep in the same bed with me, and somehow, I am supposed to okay with all of this. He spends his time watching other women fuck (pardon my french), he spends his time looking at pictures of other women naked. And I am supposed to be okay with this? He has no idea how rejected I feel, how ugly and undesirable this all makes me feel, and quire frankly, I do not think he really cares about how I feel about anything because he just continues to do it. Yesterday, he spent the entire day on the porn sites. And, somehow, I am still supposed to feel wanted? He is an asshole if he thinks that is all okay for him to do. He claims he loves me, yet his actions are completely separate from his words. If he truly loved me, he would quit the Internet porn thing, because he knows how I feel about it. And he claims it all about trust, he trusts that I am not doing anything online, so I should trust that he is not either, but how am I supposed to do that when he is looking at the base asses of other women. It is no different from cheating on me because he obviously derives some gratification from it, or he wouldn’t do it.
Well marriage counseling went swimmingly. I am apparently a superficial bitch who thinks of illness first, my cats second, and my husband third. Anytime I try to empathize with his situation whatever it may be, he says I come across to him as shallow and superficial. In other words, a stuck up bitch. All I am trying to fucking do is let him know that I do understand he feels bad about something. I am not trying be some fucking psychic who knows all. Pissed me clean the fuck off.
One thing the therapist did point out was that my husband spent twice as long explaining his concerns as I did. Basically he dominated the conversation. He talked for like twenty minutes about how he thinks I am saving money to move. Now, i f I wanted to move, I would talk to my mother about staying with her for a couple of months until I had enough money to move out, get my stuff out of storage and I would be gone like the wind. Simple as that. No conspiratorial hoarding of money, no reason why I am constantly broke except I cover about $500 worth of bills and my rent $464. Which actually comes to more than I make in a month. I do not know where the fuck he got this idea that I am going to abandon him and leave him high and dry. I am not that kind of person. Why the hell would I have made a commitment to hearing all about what a bitch I am that thinks only of herself and not other people, and how I need to fix this, that, and the other thing about myself.
I understand he feels isolated, but he just doesn’t wake up early enough to come with me to meetings, or out to see people. I understand his car is in bad shape. I had no car for 2.5 years. Finally bought one, and it nickeled and dimed me to death so I stopped driving it for like 7 years and rode a bicycle. I took the bus,and fucking walked evrywhere. So, yeah, when I TRY to empathize with his car problem. Been there, done that. For many years. I am just going to stop trying to support him, because it obviously is not what he wants. Or thinks he doesn’t realize he needs.
I give the fuck up! I am so tired of his habits, but I am not supposed to take my bipolar seriously? FUCK HIM!!!!
P.S. Sorry for the language in this post. I am really angry, and trying to deal with it with out going off on him.
Robert Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
My car recently blew a tire while I was on the expressway doing about 75 mph in heavy Easter morning traffic. I was very fortunate not to lose control of the car, and I
made my way off the expressway. I had also been hearing a noise every time I made a turn like you would make backing out of your driveway. I didn’t realize it was the CV joint going out on my axle where it connects with the wheel. The short point of this long story is I needed (in my mind) two things: Four new tires, and new brakes (I assumed the noise I was hearing from the wheel was the brakes.) So, I called my mother and explained the situation (key words called my mother), and she decided to have it towed from where I live in Los Lunas to a mechanic in Albuquerque for an evaluation of the work the car needed. When she sent me a scanned “invoice” estimating the work my car needed, I nearly went off the deep end. I was prepared to just call it quits. I had enough medication to do it (I am a pill popper). So, while I stared at the estimate of roughly $3500 worth of parts and labor, I was harboring in the back of mind that the easiest thing to do would just be to off myself. Nothing has been going very well in my life recently, so I figured I’d just take the easy way out. Instead, I called my mother. I was wondering how much of the work absolutely had to be done to make the car driveable and reliable again. I was looking at the invoice, and I figured the CV joints, the brakes, the tune up, the axles, and the tires. It all came to around $1100 less than the estimate. My mother agreed to pay for all the work it would need to keep it on the road for another 2 – 3 years. She spent $3500 fixing the car she had ended up buying because I had lost my job and could no longer make payments.
I got the car back yesterday, and ever since, I have been feeling nothing but guilt and shame; which are not exactly foreign feelings for me. I am 41 years old in a month or so, and up until the “diagnosis,” I was completely self sufficient, I had well paying jobs, and I took care of everything from car repair to paying the rent. I had only asked for help from my parents once, and that was when I was fired from my job, rent was due as well as all the other bills, and I had $273 which I spent of groceries. Somehow, imminent eviction is not as scary if you have full cabinets. Don’t ask me. It’s not like you can take the fridge with you when you get thrown out. So, I asked my parents to help me just get through the end of the semester at school, and then I would locate another job. And, that’s exactly how it worked. I was only 23 at the time so I didn’t feel too bad asking for help. Now, it is completely different.
Every time I have to ask for help, it triggers these horrible feelings of guilt and shame. I feel ashamed that I cannot manage on my own, and that I live on Social Security Disability. I feel ashamed that I am not in a position to handle monetary crises, and that my mother generally will bail me out. She shouldn’t have to. There are many examples of manic depressives that have “made it” despite the illness. Then, the guilt sets in. Guilt for being sick in the first place. Guilt that I apparently can not take care of myself financially without help. I have tried to go back to school twice, and flunked out both times. I do not understand that. I was an A student in undergraduate school. I feel guilt and shame about that. It is like the illness has sucked up everything I once was and spat it out again as this financially challenged, ineffectual, jobless, disaster of a person. My marriage is a wreck, and I do not know who to blame for that. I know it takes two people to make it work, and two people to jack it up, but I cannot help but feeling that it is my fault, and that if I weren’t mentally ill, everything would be fine. However, when I think about it, my husband is not the most emotionally stable person either, he just won’t admit to it. He has very dark moods that I personally feel is chronic major depression. But, what do I know, I have only been studying mental illness for ten years.
I just don’t understand why these feelings are listed as common symptoms of Bipolar Disorder. Every bipolar I have ever met, in hospitals and other places, have these feelings. They just manifest differently in people with the illness. Mine manifest as an urge to just go away so people don’t have to be bothered with me, and taking care of a 41 year child. But, I know that would cause great pain to those who still care about me. This seems to be a very isolating disease. The neediness of this disorder pretty much wipes out your social circle, it exhausts the people who love you, and it just takes and takes. It never seems to give back. It is an emotionally exhausting disorder for everyone; the person who has it, and the people who try to understand and support them.
A Bipolar Journey Through The Rabbit Hole 