It All Started At Birth (An Ongoing Story About How I Arrived Here) Warning: Potential Trigger

It all started the moment I was born with a predisposition to being moody. I was apparently a difficult and demanding baby and child. I can remember being and feeling very sensitive to others even as a toddler. I know “they” say we cannot remember that far back, but I do not believe that. I can remember the house that I first came home to from the time that I was about two. Obviously, I do not recall being an infant, but I can remember my younger sister as an infant which would put me at about 2 years of age. I can recall her nursery. It was the early 70’s, and she had shag carpet in her room. I vividly recall stepping on a toothpick in that room, and she was still in a crib. I recall feeling rejected when she didn’t want to play with me, and crying as I played alone. Loneliness and being or feeling alone are both very prominent in my life, and have been for many years. There really is not a feeling that is worse than that sense that you are alone even when you are with someone. Well, maybe there is, but I have not experienced it yet. 

So, I was born with the genes that predisposed me initially to deep depressions, and finally a diagnosis of Bipolar disorder. My paternal grandmother was a manic depressive who went untreated. Since the first approved treatment for Bipolar was Lithium in 1972, she would have been undiagnosed and unmedicated for about 63 years. One can only imagine the living nightmare that would have been. Well, actually, I can imagine it as I lived it for many years not knowing what was wrong. Or, more specifically what was causing the nightmarish shifts in mood. Perhaps she was allergic to lithium as I am, but I really think she just didn’t know what she had. There really wasn’t a diagnosis for manic depression when she was growing up, getting married, having children, and living her life. Besides I do not think she thought anything was really “wrong”. My grandmother typically would be in the manic phase of the illness, although she and my grandfather did not share a room for whatever reason (perhaps depression or extreme mania that he needed to get away from). She was always flitting around barely able to keep still making sure guests had everything that they needed or could want. She was very social during these episodes. She was also in the early stages of Alzheimer’s which also has a genetic component. That scares me due to the fact that it is her genetics that partially contributed to my mood disorder. The maternal side of my family has it’s own history of depression. So, I got it from both sides.

I think the first time I can remember being truly depressed was when I was still in grade school. I had few friends and the ones I had tended to drop me fairly quickly. In fact, I do not remember having a “best friend” that was another little girl. My best friend at the time was the step son of a man my father worked with at the University. Seems like every time I think about the friends I have had over the years all have been male. Anyway, I had one good friend, and the rest were to be avoided at all costs as they bullied me relentlessly. Perhaps that is why I tend to be a bit closed off. Or maybe, I just had not encountered The Art of War yet.

I remember not wanting to go to school, and pretending to be sick so I could stay home and be by myself. I think I was about 10 years old when I first really recall being depressed in a clinical sense. I wanted to be a cat more than anything in the world because they seemed to have it pretty good. They were relaxed (unlike dogs who need a lot of attention), they just wanted to eat, sleep in the sun and be petted. It appeared good to me.

At the time I was in the “gifted” program for students who had IQ’s in that range, and needed additional educational and creative outlets. We got to leave class for an hour and go do neat things like dissecting frogs or doing research papers on an assigned topic. I had been in the program since the age of 7, and we were all pretty much outcasts because the other students did not understand why we got to leave the regular class room. I knew one kid who could solve a Rubik’s cube (no matter how messed up it was) within about 5 minutes. He was probably a genius on some level.

Moving on….I was 10 when I first recognized that my moods and perceptions were different than others. I thought that no one could possibly like me, I was pretty convinced that my parents didn’t love or want me (I was a birth control failure), and I had an overdeveloped fight or flight instinct when faced with something that I perceived as a threat to me. If I was teased in any way, I ran. If I had to give a presentation like a book report, that triggered a strong flight instinct. I ran from almost everything, and could be counted on being found crying on the swings in the back of the playground. I appeared weird, and “not cool” to the other kids, and topping it off was that I could identify and perceive adult emotions, but I could not process them. I was too young. So it all came out in emotional outbursts, anger and aggression towards others, etc. All of which are classic symptoms of depression in a child. I also had, in my mind, decided that if I were to die that nobody would come to the funeral. Suicidal ideation in a child of that age? Probably. I could see it so clearly. The casket, the flowers, and the very random people of which there were few that actually cared to come. I definitely wanted to be if not invisible to others, then dead. Everything hurt too much. I just wanted out. I was 10, and I wanted to die more than anything in the world. My first attempt at leaving this world behind came when I was 12.

Nobody knew any of this was going on in my head; not my parents, not my teachers, not my few friends. I kept it to myself because I honestly believed that I would be better off dead, and I did not want to tell this to anyone although there was clearly something abnormal about my mood. Kids that age typically play with one another, and all I wanted to do was be alone so I could read. At the time, I was reading a lot of Nancy Drew books, and I wished I could be more like her. I could read two or three books in a day. I really do not know what my parents thought. They weren’t really around. My mother was busy as a full-time Law student, and my father did a lot of traveling for work. Of course, now I can look back and see that I was probably delusional, and operating on some form of psychosis. I just recall feeling really bad about myself and my worth as a member of this planet. Like I said earlier, I was 12 the first time I tried to kill myself. I drank ammonia mixed with soda after being disciplined by my parents for using a curse word when the soda fizzed up and out when I took off the lid. I look at it from the perspective of an adult with mixed episode Bipolar with psychotic features, and I can see how inherently pointless it was to try something like that for getting “talked” to by my dad for cursing. 

Since my word count is already in the 1300’s, I will start the next part in middle school when everything gets worse than I thought it could get…….

Bouncing Brain ~ The World Looks Different Through The Lens Of Insomnia

A Love Hate Masquerade (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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.

One Song You Should Stay Away From Unless You Feel Like Crying

Eric Clapton when he was with Derek and the Dominoes ~ Bell Bottom Blues

Can't Really Tell Where My Head Is At

Divorce Cakes a_006 (Photo credit: DrJohnBullas)

I have received the divorce papers. It is official; I am divorced after approximately 4 years of marriage. I do not really know how I feel about it now that it is a reality that I can read as many times as I want on page two of the Divorce Decree. And, believe me, I have been doing just that. That cannot be healthy. My anti-anxiety medication refuses to work, the mood stabilizers are on holiday to Jamaica (or where ever that postcard came from “Wish you were here!”). I am alternately very quickly through mania and depression. Mostly at the same time.

I mailed the required copies to my ex-husband as New Mexico law and I would presume most states, if not all, has this clause. He found out that the divorce was final, I think on Thursday. I found out about a week earlier. It was surreal to read those papers. I think in my mind that it was going to take longer to process the divorce packet. It took two days from the date of filing. It was so fast. My mom and I finalized the papers on a Tuesday, filed Wednesday, and by Friday I was divorced.

I really do not know how I feel about this. I have been waiting for him to change his “habit” for two or more years now. I thought I had worked out the abandonment and neglect that was part and parcel of this marriage. I have been alone with someone for so long that I thought living alone would be easy, and I would just drop into my old routines. That hasn’t happened. I feel sad and depressed. I feel like a complete failure. I have done everything right in my life’; with a few notable exceptions. Why couldn’t I get this right? Why couldn’t he get it right? Its not like he hasn’t had practice. He’s been married three times, and divorced three times. Although, I have noticed a pattern, he stays married for about 3-4 years and then gets divorced. Is he leaving them? Or, are his “habits” so odious that they leave him? He doesn’t need a wife; he needs a friend with benefits and a maid.

I didn’t expect to feel loss. i thought I had been through that already, too. Apparently not. I feel loss, I feel grief, and I feel relief and elation. I feel like I have been having a mixed episode for about three weeks. If I am manic with not too much depression, I can get things done, if I am depressed and slightly manic. I sit and mourn.

I have no more access to a car, so it is looking like my Buddhist activities are going to cease as they are on Sunday, and the Sunday buses rune every hour at inconvenient times. So, that’s not an option. As this spiritual philosophy has kept me grounded for almost 5 years, I do not know what I am going to do with out it. I cannot in all good conscience keep asking people for rides to meetings and events as it may be years before I can get a car, and that is a serious imposition. 

I am scared.

Death By Suicide: An Interpersonal-Psychological Theory Part One (warning: potentially triggering)

English: Image for mental health stubs, uses two psych images – psychiatry (medicine) and psychology (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Way Out, or Suicidal Ideation: George Grie, 2007. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For a long time, I have wondered why I and some friends (including my ex fiance’s sister’s completed suicide) of mine have attempted suicide either once or several times. When a good friend of mine attempted suicide about 20 years ago, when she was finally able to talk again (she swallowed a cocktail of pills), she said she had been drinking and it had finally hit her that this guy she was head over heels for was never going to let go of his feelings for his ex-girlfriend. So, she almost lost her life over some guy. I, myself, have a few attempts under my belt, but mine usually seem to be without reason. At least no good reason I have been able to come up with. My ex-fiance’s sister successfully committed suicide at the age of about 36, and about one month after her birthday. She, too, had a history of mental illness and suicide attempts. Please note that this post does NOT mean that I am suicidal. 

I am simply interested in the “whys” of attempted and completed suicides. What are the specific set of circumstances that have to be present for someone to consider taking their own life? Why are we the only creature in the animal kingdom that does commit suicide? I have been interested in this for most of my life. For example, using myself, I have probably attempted suicide about 5 times, maybe 4. I was always a pill popper as I cannot abide the idea of cutting my wrists or using a gun. Too painful and too messy. However, each time I tried and was really set to die, I would call 911. Why would I do that? Maybe it was an effort to garner attention, or maybe I really did mean to die but failed because my desire to live was stronger, or maybe it was my way of saying I need help (I never have had an easy time asking for help even when I clearly need it). 

So, after much research recently and over the years, I have finally found a complex but simple theory that I feel is a valid theoretical explanation as to how a person could overcome the self-preservation instinct and also what conditions need to be present to induce someone to think of killing themselves. It is called the “Interpersonal-Psychological Theory of Suicidal Behavior” by Thomas Joiner, PhD. He specializes in the research of the psychology, neurobiology and treatment of suicidal behaviors and other conditions. He was recently awarded the Shieldman Award by the American Association of Suicidology for excellence in the field of suicide as well as the Guggenheim fellowship. 

This is going to be part one which will introduce the theorist, and the premise of the theory. Part two will discuss the theory itself, it’s parts and conclusions.

The Interpersonal-Psychological Theory of Suicidal Behavior

The basic questions that this theory asks are: 1) What is the desire for suicide, and what types of thinking lead to suicidal ideation? And, 2) What is the ability to die by suicide, and in whom and how does it develop? 

Question one: “The Interpersonal-Psychological Theory” asserts that when people hold two very specific mind states for an extended period of time, they will develop a desire to die. These two states, which I will go into in part two of the post, are “perceived burdensomeness” and “low sense of belongingness/social isolation.” Both of these must be present to come to the desire to die by suicide or suicidal ideation.

Question two: “The Interpersonal-Psychological Theory” states that, in general, the self preservation instinct is so powerful that very few people can overcome it by force of will. The few that have been able to cross that barrier have developed a lack of fear of pain, injury, and death through repeated exposure to painful and/or provocative events. These experiences often include previous self-injury, but can also include repeated accidental injuries, numerous physical fights; and occupations such as a physician or a front-line soldier in which repeated exposure to pain and injury is common either vicariously or directly.

What are the current empirical data for this conceptualization? Some of it is indirect although a growing body of empirical support is accruing. 

So, those are the basic questions this theory seeks to answer, and having been suicidal in the past, it has a strong resonance because this theory explains exactly where my head was at at the time of the attempt. I will go further into the parts and empirical support and conclusions in part Two.

 

Fractured

Everything is fractured.

My mind is fractured by illness.

My life is fractured by suspicion , the past and self-doubt.

My heart is fractured by love won and lost.

My world is fractured like a jigsaw puzzle dropped to the ground.

I Need To Go Somewhere Else ~ I Shall Go Completely Mad If I Stay Here

Over Now (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

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.

I Have No Idea What I Am Right Now ~ Manic, Depressed, Stressed Or Are They All The Same

bipolar-quotes-02-300×240 (Photo credit: Life Mental Health)

 

I have one certainty right now. I have BPAD type I with psychotic features, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder with and without Agoraphobia, and Panic Disorder. It it not amusing that 3 of 4 are anxiety disorders that are triggered by stress which I am undergoing to an extreme that I never have in the past. Not this kind of stress. I can handle work-related stress, the everyday stress that comes from sharing this planet with so many different people, but I don’t know if I can handle this level of emotional stress. I feel that I may go insane (I have a list to choose from), and this time I may not come back in the same form I left in. I cannot sleep, I cannot eat, I am paralyzed in my mind where I go to hide. I feel like a coin being tossed and whatever comes up heads is where I go that day. If it’s tails, do not bother getting out of bed, it won’t be worth the time, energy or pain that will go into trying to stay positive in the face of extremely negative circumstances. 

 

Everyone thinks I am strong and I am not. I am a quivering mass that is hiding behind a facade of normalcy and strength. Unless you have experienced this type of emotional stress, you will not understand what I am going on about. My husband is going to be served with divorce papers tomorrow, and neither one of us have a place to go live other than where we are. So, we are living together for the next three months. I do not think this is going to finally be the proverbial straw, and I go off the deep end (I am already in the deep end), and never come back. This is going to color my world for a long time, I think. My whole paradigm about relationships has shifted, and it remains to be seen in which direction. My last long term relationship lasted 9 years, but at the time no one knew that I had manic-depression. PTSD, yes. But nothing that could explain the Bipolar symptoms that were beginning to manifest. Now, I know, and I feel an obligation to whoever can love me to tell them so they will know from the get go what they are in for. Ideally, this person will not be swayed and will learn how to be with someone who has periods of mania and severe depression. And, they will care and not care at the same time. They will love me for me, and the disorder won’t always be the elephant in the room like it is now.

 

He doesn’t understand what he did wrong in the marriage, I totally get what I did wrong. I am divorcing him for those reasons, not because I do not love him, but because I do love him and care about his welfare, and I am not an easy person to be around sometimes. I do things and say things that are harmful and damaging. And, I am trying to protect him from me, and to a certain extent, myself from him. I cannot tolerate his pet diversion any longer and still respect myself as a woman. I can no longer live with someone who refuses to try to learn something about Bipolar disorder since that has been the most disruptive of all my diagnoses. How can one handle something that one has no real knowledge of? I have to live with it everyday. You can be damn sure I read whatever I can get that is legitimate and not “pop” psychology. I cannot do battle against something that I do not understand. No one can. At least not effectively. I hope I can get through this without becoming cynical and jaded. I hope that I can get through this without any drama, or me going way off the radar of “normal” feeling. 

 

I just hope that……hell, I do not know what I hope. I do not even know how I feel. I do not even know if I am feeling or if I am pretending which I am so good at. I just know something is off about me these days. I do not think I have allowed myself to feel because then I would be useless. Maybe I will let myself feel when I have time. Maybe.

 

I Just Don't Understand……Maybe I Really Am As Dumb As I Feel Sometimes

You Don’t Understand Me (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

I do not get some people. It isn’t for lack of trying. Every person I have spoken to today has either been very snide or has outright yelled at me. Which tends to make me really irritable. I am already having a “manic episode” which means that I am not sleeping, eating, or anything else I supposed to do to keep myself healthy. What I do not get is why other people cannot seem to see when I am “sick” (I hate that term), and that is when they choose to get strange on me. 

 

I have no one to talk to about what is happening to me because nobody wants to hear it; they’ve got their own, much more important problems to deal with. I am being sued by my student loan provider, I am on the verge of being sued by my other student loan provider, if they win the payment amount per month that they want, I will be homeless because I simply can’t make nearly $300.00 in loan payments and pay rent. I figured it out. If I pay as the plans stand, I will have $662 (roughly) to pay rent, utilities, and try to feed myself. That’s impossible. I will be homeless. I will lose everything I have worked so hard to accomplish both socially and privately. Material possessions can be replaced eventually, but once you have been knocked down, it is really hard to stand back up.

 

I am going through a divorce and trying to live out the lease with my soon to be ex-husband. I can’t talk to him about how I feel about that. Most of the times, I feel okay about it. Neither of us were happy. But, then there are days like today where I really need someone to just listen to me. I feel very sad and lonely (as per the usual) today. I didn’t want to file for divorce, but it was the only thing that would resolve the entire situation between us. We fought all the time, made snide remarks about each other, he always defined me by my mental “interestingness”, but never by who I really am which is a normal person who feels life more intensely than most. I wrote him a note today trying to explain to him that I was not doing this out of malice, or that I can no longer tolerate him, but rather it was out of love for him and concern for his welfare that I was stepping out of the picture before I do any more damage, Apparently, it is very difficult to have a relationship with a bipolar person. I say it is very hard for a bipolar person to have a relationship with a chronically depressed person.

 

I basically have no friends anymore because he isolated me from them through very subtle emotional and verbal abuse. But, I am just as much to blame on that front. Sometimes, I think we fought about nothing just so we could hurt each other. It was really good for about the first year and a half, and then very slowly, it started to go downhill. Then it picked up momentum, and became it’s own living entity. But, how do you fight something you cannot see? How do you fix something when the other person is blaming you for nearly everything that has gone wrong, but they cannot see their own contribution to the demise of something that was once beautiful? 

 

I am feeling very uncomfortable today. I cannot seem to say anything right to anyone I have encountered today. I have been flat out yelled at by another mentally “interesting” friend who is really struggling right now. Nothing I said was right, she shot down everything I suggested as “impossible,” she put down any idea I had that might have helped. I even offered to help her clean and organize her apartment, But, that was met with more yelling. I tried to tell her that people are willing to help her, but that she pushes them away by repeatedly turning down their offers to help her. Eventually, people will get tired of getting shot down every time they try to help her, and they will stop offering. Why beat a dead horse?

 

I feel very alone in this. I know that I will be okay in the long run, but the short run is a bitch. I feel like the wicked witch of the west. I feel like he was right all along; that the destruction of this relationship was mostly me. I changed him, I damaged him, I hurt him, I didn’t show enough affection, I didn’t do this and I didn’t do that. He never stops to think that he did two very important things: he spent hours on the Internet watching and collecting amateur porn which I felt very disrespected by, and he didn’t open a single book written by the people who are the experts on mood disorders to find out how to support me, or even to just understand me. To me, that shows a lack of real caring. It tells me that his love was conditional on my not getting upset about his porn addiction, and just let him carry on his merry little way thinking that he understands the multitude of bipolar manifestations.

 

I cannot talk to anyone about this. Everyone I know is happily married. When you are getting divorced, the last thing you want to do is talk to someone with a functional marriage. It just makes everything that iota worse than it already is. I find myself questioning whether I have made the right decision, or if I really am as dumb as I feel. 

 

Tomorrow Is D-Day

Panic-attack (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well, tomorrow is “the” day. I am absolutely resolved to end this farce of a relationship and reclaim my happiness. I firmly believe that I was in a better place mentally before this relationship than I am now. Although, that may be a perception colored by sadness and anger at the demise of a marriage that was supposed to last for life. I have no idea. All I know is that I cannot sleep well, am not eating, am ignoring my appearance, and all the other hallmarks of severe anxiety. I know that this is the right thing to do, and probably has been for quite some time, but actually initiating a separation from someone you once were madly in love with is extremely scary. It means I will be alone with myself again. Just me and my cat. Although, if i am honest about it, I have been alone with my cat for a long time now. But, there was still someone to talk to. When you have nobody to talk to except your cat, then life gets a little weird. Cats are great little furry healers, though. Having a dog or a cat or whatever kind of pet you prefer gives you something to nurture that in turn helps you to remain okay. I digress because I am really freaking out. 

I do not understand why this particular separation has me so anxious. It’s not like I have not gone through this before with previous relationships, one of which lasted about 9 years. When that one ended, I did feel like I was going through a divorce due to the length of the relationship. However, I had somewhere to focus my attention during that breakup. I was finishing college and working full-time so I had little time to sit and ruminate on the loss of my significant other. This time around though feels like a failure. I feel like I failed somehow. Like I didn’t do something right, and that, perhaps, everything I did do was in some way wrong or not enough. I didn’t feel that way with my other breakups of relationships. The toughest was the nine-year one. The saddest was one that lasted almost as long as this marriage did. It was only about three and one half years, but I felt a tremendous amount of loss and grief over that one.

I am not good at dating. I am in my early 40’s, and I am pretty well set in my ways at this point. I know what I want, what I like, and what I don’t want and what I do not like. That’s going to make dating difficult. That and I am feeling like somehow being mentally “interesting” is going to be an encumbrance to my meeting someone new. It’s not like I can get away with not being straightforward about the fact that I have manic depression, PTSD, occasional bouts of Agoraphobia, and Panic attacks. They are going to rear their ugly heads at some point just as they always do, and then, people either freak out and want to get away from me, or they try their best to understand but inevitably just cannot handle it, or they are supportive and try to learn what they can about the various challenges I face daily. It’s always one of the three. I think the one that hurts most is the person who tries to understand but ultimately just cannot handle the sometimes intense emotions that I feel. Then they leave. Either be supportive and educate yourself and stick around or freak out right away and be gone. That’s how I prefer it. Two options, no grey area. 

I do not mind living alone. In fact, I may prefer it, but you cannot be alone all the time. A person will go nuts, literally, without other people. That’s another thing. I have to find a place to live that I can afford on my little SSDI check, and find a part time job to supplement my income. People take a look at my resume, and the first thing they ask is why I haven’t worked in 6 years. That’s a tough one to explain. It takes delicacy and a lot of inferences and innuendo to having been ill, but being better now. Then, they ask why I only worked two years in previous positions. Hmmmm, because I had uncontrollable mood swings and severe reactions to stress that were sometimes debilitating and I simply could not work for several days? This is where the Agoraphobia and Panic attacks live. i would try to get out the door, even going so far as to get ready to go, and at the last minute realize that the world was too scary that day, and I would call in sick. I was sick, in a matter of speaking, but not in a way that anyone would really understand unless they had had a similar experience. So, that should be fun. Not. I really want to try to finish my Paralegal degree because I think I would make a good one. I love research, I enjoy the legal profession, and I like to be support staff. However, that involves getting funding and getting to school. 

I know I shouldn’t feel like a failure, but you reach 42 and your only accomplishment of note is that you finished undergraduate school, you kind of feel like you just didn’t meet your “potential.” There are so many highly functioning Manic Depressives, i just wonder if I am one of them. I do not feel mentally impaired in any way, I do not feel that I am not smart enough, I guess I feel like somehow I have deserved everything that life has thrown at me, and I have either caught the ball and ran with it, or I didn’t. For me, there seems to be no grey area. I am either manic (like I suspect I am now) or I am depressed, but I seem to reside mostly in the middle with mixed episodes: manic and depressed. I know that I am not depressed because the crushing weight that is depression is not sitting on my chest. Probably slightly manic: not eating, not sleeping, thoughts racing, restless and irritable. 

I am very scared and sad and glad at the same time. I cannot live with someone who simply refuses to educate themselves about my “disorders,” I do not like that term. It is debilitating, and requires that you accept yourself as less than. But it sure is hard not to feel less than when you are ackowledging that you have lost. I intellectually understand that this divorce is not all my fault, that there is a role that my husband played, but I am experiencing the familiar heart-mind split. If i keep it intellectual, I am less sad, more pragmatic, and more realistic about this. If I let my heart into this, i will be a slobbery mess. 

Okay, feeling calmer and more certain than ever that this is the right choice for my health both physical and mental. It has disintegrated to a point where verbal and emotional abuse is common. I grew up that way. I do not have to live like that as an adult. As an adult, I have a choice. Exercising that choice is a whole different world. I warned him that it would come to this, and all he said was don’t threaten me. It wasn’t a threat, it was a certainty. It just got accelerated, that’s all. Okay, I think the anxiety has passed. Maybe I’ll go throw some makeup at my face so I do not look so plain 🙂