Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night. Oil on canvas, 73×92 cm, 28¾×36¼ in. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
So, here we go again. Another fateful trip on the counseling merry-go-round. I really hope that the Psychologist is bright enough to cut through the husband’s bullshit. He keeps telling the doctor that I was at an all time low when he met me. He makes it sound like he gave me a life that was not unfulfilling and dull.
I liked my life. I was up at 4 or 5 am, and by 8 am, I was on my bike, heading somewhere for two or three hours. I rode with a close friend (and his brother or nephew, sometimes) every Sunday morning. We’re talking 40 mile treks through the urban jungle complete with smoke belching dragons (aka cars). In the summer, after I got back from riding I would rinse off and go hang out by the pool at the apartments. I’d talk to people, some of us became friends. I dated, I went out with friends. But, somehow the egocentrism he is accusing me of (you only care about your illness, ummmmmm, correct me if I am wrong, but shouldn’t I be somewhat concerned about it, you only care about your cat, well, maybe if you hadn’t made me kill the other two, I wouldn‘t have such a clingy cat;the others were her brother, and surrogate mom, and the last thing I care about is myself).
Maybe if he were more affectionate and supportive instead of being “constructively” critical the majority of the time, I wouldn’t feel the need to be so vigilant about my own well-being. I would know someone was there to help me if I fell. He is not about that. I have to pick myself up and he calls it being egotistical. Maybe if he would actually bother to learn something scientifically researched and published by M.D.’s, P.hD’s, people who have spent their lives researching and treating Bipolar people, and not just relying on some rather unfortunate experiences he had with one who also was Boderline (bad combo), and one who promised him that she had it under control What a fallacy! Bipolar is never “under control”; it is managed with proper medication, seeing a therapist as often as needed and making regular appointments with you psychiatrist.
I told him when I found out what the one woman had told him that I was offering him no guarantees. My bipolar was managed, but that I would never promise that it was under control. And, I was right. I went through episodes of depression, mania, depression and mania, and outright violent moods. I just wish he would educate himself because that would take so much pressure off of me to be “normal” all the time. I can’t cry because that is showing weakness. I cannot be angry, happy, sad, joyous, any emotion because it isn’t “real”. It is the illness. It really does seem to me that that is the way he sees me: as nothing more than a mentally ill person who always needs help, and can’t see herself any other way. I know what I see in the mirror when I am looking: I see a determined person, I see a person who has goals and dreams and the ambition to realize them, I do NOT see a weakling (as he would have me be).
So, I have to question, if I am so many negative things, why’d he even bother looking for me last night? I am pretty good at handling myself, not to mention that I tend to wear Harley hard toed riding boots. That alone could break something if necessary. If I am to be so denigrated in the therapy sessions, why would want to go find that? Are you trying to say I Love You? Why can you not just tell me if you love me or if you don’t? If you don’t, let me go. Let me live. If you do love me, stop disparaging me, and let me live.
But then again, I am the one who could be filtering all of this through a “defective” mind……but I do not think so.
“……Making love to his ego, Ziggy sucked up into his mind…” ~ David Bowie
i have had it. I have reached the end of my rope. I cannot stand people today. I tried to
Ever have a day/week/life like this?
do something that I thought would be appreciated by an certain individual yesterday. Turns out the road to hell really is paved with good intentions, but I had no idea it came with undeserved criticism, and a 15 minute long chastising discussion (one sided) about how what I had done was completely wrong. WTF!!?!?!??!
Then, to add insult to injury, said person said they recognize that our thought processes were different: first and foremost because of my “illness,” it is always my fucking illness first, then other reasons such as different backgrounds, different life experiences, etc. But, always the “illness” first and always foremost. Yeah, I have had a much harder life than said individual. But, I, in many ways “chose” that lifestyle based on things that happened to me when I was much younger. Much, much younger. Like barely 16.
I did not ask for the event that occurred and I was in no way old enough to process it. So, I buried it with drugs and alcohol. I did not know what else to do. (There goes the fucking phone again. I am going to rip them out of the wall). When I brought up that snorting speed and cocaine for about 6 years isn’t real healthy for the lungs either (not to mention you tend to chain smoke while high on stimulants), said individual says to me: “You know you always try to compare your experiences like they are similar to others’.” Snorting coke and speed is not good for any part of the body involved. You snort the stuff up your nose…..not good for septum and sinuses. Since you are snorting it, it goes straight into your lungs. That’s fucking healthy, and then you chain smoke. How is that different than smoking for 40 years? Fuck this person. Who the hell do they think they are? Who the fuck died and made them capable of walking on water while the rest of us drown?
So, said conversation (again one sided) basically went something like this. No thank you for trying to do something nice, just you know I cannot smoke commercial brand cigarettes because of the additives. I have to smoke pure tobacco. Said individual has been smoking since I was born, maybe they should quit if brand name cigarettes are going to have such a negative effect. Smoking any cigarette is going to be bad for your throat, lungs, mouth, etc. Then said individual pointed out that when they bought cigarettes for us (yes, I took up smoking after then “incident when I was 16”), that they always got the ones with no additives even if it meant driving further. Well, as people who read my blog know, I totaled my car for the New Year (January 5th). So,I have to drive another car that I am not entirely comfortable with (it is huge compared to my old car.) So, I went as far as I could before the anxiety set in.
I am so fucking sorry I tried to do something that I thought would be appreciated. Won’t happen again. Trust me. I may make mistakes all the time (due to my “illness”), but I do learn from some of them. This one I learned from. Good intentions are not appreciated. I feel taken for granted, I feel like I do not ever want to try to do anything nice for this person ever again.
Oh, and then there is what I found in my email yesterday from my Internet company. Apparently,I downloaded a “film” back in December from some company DBA as “Devil‘s Films”. First of all, I would not be looking at “films” produced by such a company: I find that I lose interest in about a nanosecond, and they are not my preferred viewing material. Apparently, this was a niche film involving two “grannies” getting down with each other. WTF would I be doing watching that kind of crap? I am 41 years old. Not 65. Were I not to be completely bored by the genre in general, I would prefer younger people, with a plot that actually tells a story….. not just two or more people doing their thing with each other. Now that I have finished raving and ranting about that, here comes the real problem. The account is in my name, with my email, my address. I “own” the account. It doesn’t matter what someone else does with it, I am the responsible party. I am the one who could get fined, I am the one who could be criminally prosecuted. Not the dipshit that downloaded the “film” in the first place. And, then said jackass says, “I don’t even have the video anymore. It was boring so I deleted it”.
Does not matter if the “film is still on the computer or not. The point is that it was downloaded in the first place. And the Internet company knows it. It came from my router’s IP address, it has my router’s MAC address, it has everything associated with the router’s configuration. My router and my IP and MAC addresses. That’s how it was traced in the first place. I am not a techno-idiot. I know how to trace people from their IP addresses and the MAC address of the computer. I can pin it down to a physical address, in whatever town, city, state. I can pull up satellite maps of the area. This is how the company discovered the copyright infringement.
For crying out loud, if you are going to risk the fine and/or jail time, why download two grannies getting it on. If that’s what you are into, you are married to a person in the wrong age group. Even at 41, I am considered in this realm as “mature,” meaning I am not 20 something. Find a new fucking hobby (pardon the bad pun). Like, oh I do not know, paying attention to your wife who is very close to leaving you, or at least, getting what she doesn’t get at home somewhere else.
I have never cheated on a lover before, but I am getting damn close. I get no attention, no affection, it is a given that I will clean the kitchen and cook dinner. No thank you’s. Those are implied. It may be implied, but it is nice to hear once in a while. I am so close to ending this relationship so I don’t end up cheating because I have very strong feelings about that. My father cheated on my mom with a family “friend” for about 6 years until they both divorced and then married each other. So, I have a thing about cheating. It is wrong. Break up first if you think you are going to the dark side. That way no one gets seriously hurt, and there is no having to forgive and forget. I am that close. But, considering what my mom went through, I just cannot do it. I will divorce first. It’s not like this is a marriage anyway. He sleeps on the couch and has for about 3 months. I sleep in the bed, and I won’t let him sleep there anymore. It has been about the same amount of time since we had sex (I know, overshare), but it is relevant to my wanting to cheat. I don’t understand.
My “illness” has not popped up recently which said person claims is why they are sleeping on the couch and we are not engaged in “normal” marital relations. I am 41 freaking years old. I still have a very healthy sex drive, and I do not even get kisses or hugs. I am talking zero physical affection. And, he wonders why I don’t put on my lingerie anymore. It such an obvious answer. The last few times I have tried that, I got shot down in flames, and felt like such an idiot. Since I do not feeling like an idiot for trying to initiate sexual relations with my husband, I stopped. No reaction, no sexy lingerie. That’s the way it works. What is the point if you get no reaction? You just sit there all dolled up while he watches PBS Newshour or some shit like that. It is humiliating. I am just going to let him have his “fantasy” amateur porn stars. They seem to do more for him than I can.
Besides, It is not like I am ugly. Quite the opposite. I am not beautiful, but I am very pretty. Coke bottle figure, a little more voluptuous than I would like to be, but not bad. I am well proportioned, I have eyes that change from grey to green, I have a large chest (which he claims he has always liked in women; not me apparently). Basically, I have no problem finding men. Most women don’t because men are, in general (not always), interested in one thing from women, and it isn’t philosophical conversation. Robin Williams once said that men only have enough blood to run one head at a time. True.
So, I am completely pissed off while at the same time really sad. Mixed-episode? I do not think so. I think everything in my little world has collapsed, and I am not handling it as well as I could be. I am getting angry, I am getting depressed, I am feeling unloved, unwanted, undesirable, not sexy (even though I know some guys who would disagree, just not the main one), I do not even know why I spend so much time doing my make-up (unless it is to out-do other women; this is likely. Women are catty like that). Continue reading →
I am feeling so utterly and completely frustrated right now. I feel like crying, but I can’t because the meds keep me from crying most of the time. I really need a marriage counselor, and my Medicare Advantage Plan does not cover marriage counseling. Like older people do not need a bit of help here and there with their relationships?!!?! WTF?!?!?! I realize that I am only 40-ish, but since I qualify for Medicare part B, I also qualify for the Medicare Advantage Plans. It covers my psychiatrist and my therapist, so why does the outpatient mental/”behavioral” health not cover marriage counseling. A bad marriage is mentally taxing and draining. And, those are bad things for Bipolars. Maybe that’s why every one of my relationships have gone south.
My husband hasn’t talked to me in two days, we haven’t slept in the same bed for two months, and the marital relations thing is not happening. At this point, it would be like being with a stranger. I do not know who he is anymore. I do not know who I am in relation to the marriage. I know who I am away from him, but not when with him. There is a Crosby, Stills, and Nash song about how two people while apart are two separate people, but when together they create a third entity. I do not know what my place in the third entity is. If I even have one.
He claims to want to go to therapy, but I see him doing no work to find a therapist, or anything. That seems to me to be a sign that he is not really serious about repairing what used to be a really beautiful relationship. I cannot live like this. I need for this to either end or get fixed. And, I am not one to admit defeat until I have tried to win. It is like saying you do not like a food you have never tried. How do you know if you haven’t tried it? So, I am unwilling to admit defeat until I run out of options. Then, and only then, will I admit it is impossible, the situation untenable, and that I have failed.
I am trying to find something through Medicare or Community Outreach programs, but I am finding nothing that seems helpful……no wonder the divorce rate in this country is so high. There’s no help anywhere.
I really feel like having a tantrum; full-fledged with kicking and screaming and crying, but I cannot due to medication. Even though I have specifically kept my doses low enough to be therapeutic, but still allow me to feel, they make it so I just cannot cry. That’s all I want to do. I am so frustrated with our mental health system. It is not just dysfunctional; it is broken, perhaps irreparably. People have crises in all parts of their lives. If I was suicidal, I could get help. But I am not suicidal. What I am is someone trying to save their marriage. So much for family values as espoused by the Right-wingers.
I never thought the above words would describe my life. Alone, yes, but that was alone by myself. As in no roommate, no live-in boyfriend, just cats. Which if I think about it makes me seem creepy in a way. But, seriously, it was me and my pets. I was not alone and with someone. Now I am alone but married. And, that makes no sense to me. I think (possibly paranoia speaking here) that he intentionally keeps different hours than I do so he only sees me for a portion of his waking hours. And, even then, he does not see me. He is glued to his computer in his little second or third bedroom “office.” I do not know what he does in there, and I really do not want to know. It would probably just make me mad. You know he and I have not shared any couples time in almost a month? We are not a couple. We are two entities who collided like particles in a particle accelerator. We ran into each other, meshed and decided getting married seemed to be the thing to do. I do not think that particles that have been smashed apart or fused together by an accelerator should be getting married. It just isn’t smart, level headed, or rational. It is the action of two teenagers that think they are madly in love….. the key word here is “think.” So, I thought I was in love with him, and he thought he was in love with me, and he cannot demonstrate physical affection, so, maybe I was in love with the idea of being in love. Maybe he was in love with the idea of being in love. It is probably both of our faults that we find ourselves in this mess.
I do not think I am in love with him anymore, and if I am, it is been buried so deeply down in the recesses of my mind that I do not know how to dredge the feelings up any more. He has hurt me way too many times, broken too many promises, and gotten angry with me for asking him to take me to the psych hospital; like I really wanted to lock myself up voluntarily. Hell, no, I hate that place, but he began yelling at me that he was sick of my “attention seeking” behavior. I was not fucking kidding about needing to go to the funny farm. I was having tea with the Mad Hatter and the Red Queen had lost her head by the time I asked. So, he yelled at me that he was tired of the behavior. Now, I just do not talk. I stopped eating after he told me I had gained weight. So, as the old saying goes “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.” Now, he has a silent wife who is slowly starving herself, and contemplating the pill bottle game again. Be very careful what you ask for either out loud, through your thoughts or through your actions.
I was told I was getting fat, I stopped eating. I was told I was “attention seeking,” I shut the fuck up, I get yelled at, I just take it now as part of his flawed personality. Not that I walk on or above water, I certainly do not, but at least I do not act like I do.
I have become untouchable for reasons unknown, but i suspect it is the weight issue. A whole bunch of people have noticed that I have lost weight except, you can take your wild stab in the dark here, him. I know he has noticed but, for the love of god, say something about it. It isn’t hard to open your mouth and heart and pay someone a compliment. It’s not like he ran into an evil serial killer clown that super-glued his lips shut. He is capable of giving a compliment, or even a simple out of the blue “I Love You” would be nice. But I am untouchable, he won’t touch me at all. Its like he’s afraid to catch cooties or something. It is situations like this that drive people to cheating or divorce. I am not something that can thrive without attention. He gives his plants more attention than he does to me. I could be lying dead on the bathroom floor for hours before he would think to look for me, or at least, that is the way it feels to me. But, I am the sick one, the one with the mood problem, therefore it is probably paranoid thinking on my part. It seems like my emotions never steer me in the correct way, but my gut instincts have always been pretty good, and right now they are telling me that he doesn’t love me anymore, doesn’t want have sex with me any more, that touching me in any way, shape or form is out of the question. I am sorry but that does not work for me. I need to feel loved and wanted, and apparently he cannot provide that for me any more.
He used to be very affectionate, and then the love of his life died, and that was the end of that. No more attention or affection for his wife. He died at the same time that she did. Her name was Grace, and apparently they had a love affair for the ages. That was really the end of his ability to show love and affection toward any body. I think when this lease is up, we should go our own separate ways. I am not getting what I need out of the relationship, and apparently neither is he.
I feel like I am living in a caste system. And, I am at the bottom of the system where the untouchables live. I certainly did not ever think that my life could be summed up in three words: Alone, Untouchable and Unloved. I never thought that could happen, but I guess that is the problem with saying never.
I guess I’ll go dishes since that was a maid does…..well, except Arnold Schwanegger’s 🙂
Why, oh why did I marry a man who has the ability of a pet snake to be affectionate and demonstrative in the affection he does give? If you love somebody, you are supposed to show it. You know, hold hands in public (gasp), kiss goodnight or morning, kiss and hug them when you come home from somewhere. Show them that they are loved and desired; do not just ignore their physical need for affection, and then hope everything is going to be okay. That’s just stupidity, and will get you nothing in return. In fact, it will only make the person wonder if he/she really is loved and wanted/needed, or if they are just a maid to clean up after you, cook for you, make sure the sheets are clean, etc. It is all fine and dandy to bring them something home from the store to let them know that you, at the very least, do think about them. But, physical touch and affection is pretty common among couples, and actually has been proven to be something that people, being primates, actually need in order to feel loved.I do not feel loved. I do not feel that I can go to my spouse with problems I may be having. He just calls it complaining, well, that is exactly what the hell it is sometimes. Other times, I really need to talk to someone, and he just isn’t there. It is not fair. I am always more than ready to listen to him, and show him affection, but he seems incapable of physical displays of attention. I do not think I can take it any more. He never tells me that I am loved, he never physically displays any affection for me. And, then, he wonders why I feel the way that I do sometimes. I get more love from my cats…..what does that tell you? I am deprived of love. He says he loves me, but talk is really cheap these days. A gallon of gas costs more…. he is always saying that action says more than words. Well, for the love of god, put your money where your mouth is. Quit telling me what I need to do, and try and figure out how you are going to contribute to this marriage. Figure out what it is that you need to do to make me feel assured that you really do love me. Stop getting mad at me all the time; all I am going to do now is talk back to you. I do not care because I cannot tell if you do.
I do not talk to you about anything important to me because it seems to me that you think it is a bunch of mindless drivel or nonsense. I do not tell you nuances that you may not have heard in stories I have told you before because all you do is shoot me down with some comment like “I have heard that before,” or” You’ve told me that three times.” Well, you may not have heard the part I am going to tell, and guess what, you are not going to because I am tired of basically being told to shut up all the time. I am tired of not feeling like you love me, I am tired of not having any form of intimacy in our relationship, I am tired of you being unwilling or unable to show affection. There are a lot of things I am tired of about this relationship. I have never felt so alone while with someone as I have with you, and if I am going to feel alone, why not just be alone? Why should I be alone with someone? It does not make sense. Being in this relationship is like clapping with one hand. It makes no sound. And this relationship is beginning to make no sense to me. A relationship is generally about companionship and mutual love and respect. We have none of that in my opinion. We spend our days alone on our computers, I literally have to drag you out to eat dinner with me, we do not sleep with one another, both literally and figuratively. So, what’s the point? I am beginning to think there is none. I am alone in a partnership of two. That isn’t right. I should just go back to the way it was with me and my cats, and the occasional boyfriend. At least then, I didn’t have this problem with not feeling any love or affection. I was so wrong about marriage. So wrong. I thought it meant you had a life partner, someone to love and love you back, someone to share hopes and dreams and successes and failures with, someone to talk to about nothing and everything, someone to share your bed at night (or afternoon), but I was so far off the mark, it is almost but not quite funny. Definitely not funny. I have never felt so unloved in my life except maybe by my father. This just is not how it is supposed to be. Even my own parents who later divorced showed some affection to each other, even in the midst of all their problems. This is just wrong. I should not feel this way. I should not be constantly depressed and sad. That’s just not the way it is supposed to be. But then again, maybe I am naive. See, there I go again blaming myself. It is my fault. Everything is. Always has been, always will be.
The last couple of weeks have been a roller coaster ride from okay to Saturday’s really not okay. As I look back, I do not understand where all that emotion came from. All I can think is that it was the culmination of trying to get to get my point across to someone who couldn’t listen but instead thought to insert their own interpretation of my words into their consciousness. I have never in m life seen such a wild “reading between the lines,” and it has ended a friendship for which I am very sorry, and which makes my heart heavy. It also brings to mind the question: “Why do the stronger prey upon the weaker?” because if my words were not written from 40 miles away, this would have been a verbal confrontation, and I am not sure who would have come out on top. Both of us are too skilled in psychological warfare from past confrontations. I forgot my coffee….bad at this time of morning. For me, anyway. now I am coughing up my lungs because one side effect of my medications is that I sometimes (a lot) swallow wrong….. not my favorite side effect, but one that I can live with. I have put that person’s email address into my blocked, junk mail folder because that is all it is, junk mail drivel, and a obvious attempt at the “misery loves company” gambit. It was the only thing I could do to protect myself from this person’s twisted logic and scathing words. And, if there is one thing I have learned about coming out of depressive episodes that send you running for the nearest funny farm, it is too protect myself at all costs because it is too easy to spiral back down the rabbit hole, and the Mad Hatter is always willing to have tea and biscuits.
Saturday I got what I hope is the last communication from this person, and it was so filled with anger and hate, the words were nearly steaming on my monitor. I am surprised the damn thing did not melt. The message might as well been written in capital letters, at least then I would have known for certain I was being yelled at. I have no intention of ever being friends with this person again. I simply cannot take the anger. It is visceral, almost sentient. In fact, I would say it is sentient. The anger and accompanying depression this person feels is beyond their control as is evidenced by the string of twisted emails. I would apologize for something, this person would turn it into I wanted some thing from them. There was nothing I wanted from them except to repair the damage to our friendship, but that was quite obviously lost on them. What I do not understand is that I read my emails, and the responses to them, and there is only one where I express any kind of offense or ire. The rest were apologetic in tone, and somehow in this person’s mind they got jumbled into I wanted something from them, I needed something they could not provide, yada, yada, yada….. Yeah, I wanted something. To repair the friendship, but that is not a cause for what this person did. The compassionate me says let it go, this person is miserable and depressed and angry. I was told they just wanted friends, and my very first thought, was if this is how they make and keep friends, then it is no wonder they find and lose them so fast. This person knows about cause and effect, and I definitely think that they are having the problems they are because all they ever do is make bad causes with people.
I guess the worst part of this is my support system is shaky at best, and non-existent at worst. Whenever I try to discuss how I am feeling, I get blown off. If I try to add a nuance to a story I have already told in one way, shape or another, I hear, “You’ve already told me that,” whereas he can tell me the same freaking thing over and over again, and I say nothing because there is always new information in the retelling. I always find some new piece of information that I did not know before. If he bothered to listen to me, or even pay me the most minimal amount of attention, I might not have gone off to have tea with my good friend the Mad Hatter and Red Queen. If he would just listen to me, he might find out more about how I think, how I see the world, what I think about, where I think my ideas come from, and so on and so forth. But, although he prides himself on being observant and an active listener, he really is just like everyone else. Waiting for their turn to talk. Because what he has to say is so much more important than anything I might have to say. I go whole days without talking because I have nothing “new” to say. Even my therapist of almost 9 years doesn’t think she has heard everything I have to say on a lot of subjects especially my family. So, I cannot talk to him about my feelings regarding this rather sad turn of events. I am stuck alone, in my head, in the not so green fields of sadness, ready to fall down the rabbit hole while I mull the whole thing over.
I know I should just “let it go,” but it just isn’t that simple. I lost something I valued. He loses shit from his storage locker that he doesn’t even remember, and it is a big ordeal. I lose a friend, and I am just supposed to blow that off? So what if he lost his stuff. He obviously didn’t need it or it would not have been in storage for as long as it was. And, stuff is replaceable, friendships are not. In my rather humble opinion, a friendship is a whole lot more important than a bunch of stuff. Stuff gets lost, people are not supposed to be disposed of as if they are so much flotsam and jetsam. When you move, you invariably will leave something behind, and remember it later, but by then it is gone. I realize that some things are sentimental; I have my own bunch of stuff that has traveled with me for 22 years. But, to just toss away a friendship is almost unforgivable, at least in my eyes. They are to be nurtured, cultivated, and cared for the same way you would a garden. You do not cultivate stuff; you collect it, and most of it you will never use, but you have it just in case (insert sarcasm here). I see what is happening. Because I am being denied the opportunity to talk this out with someone who is supposed to be my life partner, the anger and depression I feel at being tossed away is being transferred to him. I do not understand why he refuses to let me talk about it. He really ought to pay more attention to me and my moods than he does. He is the only one in a position to do that objectively. All my observations are subjective. I subjectively notice that I am not happy with a lot of things. If only people really cared about one another instead of paying lip service to compassion just to look good. The world would be a much more accepting place.
You know, it is so nice to be supported by someone who purports to love you. I say this with the utmost sarcasm. I am getting no support whatsoever from a person who is very close to me about something that has been going on for nearly a month. I was released from the psych ward on Tuesday February 7, 2012 having had what I can only describe as a complete “nervous breakdown,” I am sure there is a more clinical, less amorphous way of describing it. But, I had been falling down my rabbit hole on the way to tea with my good friend the Mad Hatter for about 3 months. The reason I did not see it this time around was that it took so damn long to sneak up on me. I had changed the dosage of my medication, and I had stopped chanting (Nichiren Buddhists will understand this; for the rest of the readers, I will explain my life philosophy soon) regularly at about the same time; NOT a good idea for these two events to coincide. Henceforth, the nervous breakdown, and the tea party with all my friends in the rabbit hole.
I remember that night as well, but that is not what this post is about. This post is about support from people who “claim” to love you. There goes the paranoia again; the quotes around the word claim. Hmm, interesting. I am having a problem with one of the other members of the Buddhist community. We were once friends, and apparently after the strangest exchange of emails I have ever received (it was like clapping with one hand; everything I wrote was twisted to suit this person’s sense of themselves as worthless, stupid, etc., and I never said anything of the kind) we are no longer friends. So, this has really been bugging me, I have cried, come close to crying, and it is weighing heavily on my heart because I know that the anger, although written in emails to me was really meant for someone else who will not talk with me about it.
So, I am newly out of a very long depressive episode that finally resulted in my playing the pill bottle game, and my not changing clothes, bathing, washing my hair, putting on makeup, and sleeping all day. All of which are signs of a major depressive episode, Hello? Did my husband with whom I live constantly notice these things? NO! Okay, non-sequiter, the night I went to the hospital, I was suicidal (but he wouldn’t know that because he was not paying attention to me, not that I need constant attention. I am perfectly happy alone. But, in this case, he should have been worried about me by this time. I always wash my hair, and bathe. I cannot stand feeling grungy. So, after week or so of my not bathing or getting out of bed, I would think he would have noticed something was awry, don’t you think? If it were him, I would have noticed. I mean, a person’s behavior changes that much, and you cannot see it. Either you are stupid or blind, one or the other.
Anyway, I came to him in his little office, and asked him if he would take me to the hospital. Not an unreasonable request for someone playing the pill bottle game. I was trying to save myself. At any rate, his reaction was to throw his glasses on the desk, pound his hand on the desk, hard, and yell at me. I do not recall exactly what he said, but it had something to do with my creating these scenes when I am feeling ignored. Hell yeah, I was feeling ignored. I had slipped into suicidal ideation, and thought the idea seemed pretty damn attractive, and he hadn’t noticed that a single thing was wrong with me. It is not like he doesn’t know that I have Bipolar disorder. He just won’t take the time to really learn about it, he just relies on past experiences with other Bipolars. But, those people are not me, and the disease manifests itself differently in everyone. I happen to be Bipolar Type I with Psychotic tendencies and Rapid Cycling. This is the worst type of Bipolar a person can have. But, he refuses to do any research to better understand me.
Anyhow, he gets angry with me, and thinks that I am creating a scene to get attention. Well, yeah, I needed attention. I had needed attention before it had become this bad. I told him that I was suicidal, he got angrier. So, I told him to go fuck himself, that I was packing a bag or two and calling 911 for an ambulance to take me to Albuquerque because there is no hospital where we live. So, by now, I am thoroughly pissed off, suicidal, and extraordinarily depressed. He tells me not to call the ambulance, and I just said, No, I didn’t want him to take me to the hospital if that was going to be how he reacted. I said, I am calling 911, fuck you I am not going anywhere with you. Then I asked him if I was supposed to be able to trust him with my life, why did he get angry at me for asking him to drive me to Albuquerque to the hospital? I told him that apparently I could not trust him with anything if I could not trust him to help me save my life. By now, he has decided that maybe something really is wrong, I am not kidding about going to the hospital. Of course I wasn’t kidding. i hate that place with a passion which, thankfully, my mother told him. They had a few minutes conversation about the hospital, and my mother told him I hated it there, and that if I am asking to go there, I am in a really bad way. Like an I can’t see my way out of the hole without killing myself type of really bad way. He took me to the hospital, and apologized for his earlier behavior several times. But, he lost some of my trust that night. Apparently, me and my illness are on our own…..
So, back to the situation that started the whole month long, can’t recover from the depression problem. I sent out an email apologizing for the Calendar being late as i had been ill and was in the hospital, and I didn’t have a laptop with smiley face after it. So, I get this scathing email back from this person that was my friend (I can hold a grudge too) that just leaves me befuddled as to why this individual is so angry with me for being sick. I am so confused. So, I chanted for a few days and wrote back that I was a bit offended that this person had chosen to vent their anger on me, and that I didn’t understand where it was coming from. Not a nasty email at all. The next one comes, and it is even more venomous, so, again I am apologetic, trying to explain myself, and getting nowhere. The next one comes,and it is more friendly in tone like everything is okay, so I write back that it is good that we are back on the same page because I wanted to join a study group that this person attends, and it would be uncomfortable for both of us if we were not getting along. Seems innocuous and innocent enough, but noooooooooo, not even close. Somehow this person reads between the four or five lines I wrote and decides that I am calling them stupid, questioning their practice of X number of years, and a whole host of other weirdness that just served to confuse me even more. So, I said so. I wrote back that I was confused by this person’s response to an innocent email saying that I was glad we were on the same page. I also asked this person not to email me again as the emails were just getting more and more angry in tone, and I cannot handle that right now. I am not completely well yet. I am still depressed. Not just low mood, but seriously depressed. not suicidal, but at the same time, it does seem like it could be a good idea. I am in that middle ground of recovery where the depression lingers along with the suicidal ideation so, I am just not equipped to deal with this person’s anger and, frankly, rage at the world. I am not responsible for their life’s events.
Well, even after I asked this person to stop emailing me, they had to get in one last word. This one was the angriest of them all. It ended our friendship for good. I cannot be friends with someone that angry, I have my own mental health to look after since my husband refuses to learn about it, and refuses to help me when I need it, and thinks I am “attention seeking”. The last 2.5 hours of writing have been quite enjoyable, and I am by myself. I do not need the constant attention that he thinks I do. Far from it, I would find that annoying, but a little affection here and there is not bad.
The only problem is that I need to talk this out because it has really affected me emotionally. I have a really hard time handling conflict between myself and others, especially people who called themselves friends. Well, now I know that this person’s friendship is conditional on keeping then happy and not upsetting them in any way. My husband is not willing to listen to me talk about it, he just says that he won’t talk about it any further. What the fuck good is he then? It is still bothering me, and quite frankly, is getting in the way of my getting better although my ability to hide it is coming back. That’s a good sign, I suppose. Not so much, really. If I am becoming good at hiding it again then no one will know when something is wrong like now with this email fiasco that has left me angry and sad and depressed. But, apparently, I am the only one who can care for me, so I am simply going to have to find a way to move past it on my own…. like I have with so many other things. Why do I even have a husband at all if I cannot talk to him? I certainly fail to see the point a lot of the time. So, I will suffer behind a veneer of wellness and strength like I do so often.
I am sure that manic depressive illness is no picnic from the other side of the room either. The yelling, the temper tantrums, the complete withdrawal when one of us either cannot take the mood swings, or the ill person is in a depressive phase of the illness. It is very complicated no matter which phase of the illness the sick person is in (I hate to use that word, but it all that will fit here), the afflicted person feels guilt and shame and hurt and sadness that they cannot be more normal, unfortunately, this depression and accompanying feelings of guilt and shame and even paranoia, in some cases (mine), can, will and does express itself as extreme anger about the illness, about things that were done to them, issues the other party had nothing to do with. Many issues are very deep seated ones that have been present since childhood. Issues surrounding parents or the lack thereof, issues about siblings, issues about not feeling normal like everyone else seems to be, and a lot of times, issues surrounding school and being bullied because something about you is “off”according to the kids at school. So, a budding bipolar is frequently bullied, called names, even beaten up by other kids.
Usually, the newly “sick” person will become severely depressed, and will withdraw from family and friends, sometimes to the point that they will only speak when they have to. I know. I did not speak for my entire freshman year in high school. I can only imagine how helpless my parents must have felt. They finally took me to a psychiatrist when I was about 15 or 16, but I could not stand the guy and just flat out would tell him what he wanted to hear, and then would leave having totally wasted my parents money. I do have to give them credit. They did try several times to help me, but I was not ready to admit that I needed help.
I think to a certain extent, my parents did give up on me. I remember the most traumatic night of my entire life, coming home, and having them waiting up for me so they could yell at me for not being where I said I would be, coming home late, in fact, they were so wrapped up in their own irritation with my behavior, my lying, and my lateness that they failed to observe the condition I was in. I told them to F*&^ off, and I went to the bathroom and bathed for what seemed like hours. My parents never questioned me about why…..they just couldn’t figure out why their previously relatively obedient daughter had suddenly turned about 180 degrees around, and was now staying out to all hours of the night, making new (and criminal) friends, doing drugs (not hard ones, those came later, read the post on self-medication), and generally just being completely unruly. Looking back, I feel really bad that I put them through that. There was a lot of yelling between my father and myself. Usually initiated by me, but I just could not understand how they could not have asked me what was wrong that night. I still am somewhat befuddled by that. But, that is water under a very wide bridge. Because of their reaction or maybe my age at the time (barely 16), I could not process their reaction, and I certainly could not process what had happened. So, I became an incredibly difficult person to live with. I would go off the deep end for no reason that they or I understood. I knew I was angry, but I guess, in retrospect, I was angrier than I thought at the time. I would leave, slamming the door behind me for no reason other than to slam the door. My emotions knew no rhyme or reason. I would imagine my parents were probably a little afraid of me. I know my sister was. The thing was I did not mean to do these things. I acted with no thought as to how the person on the receiving end would feel because at the time I just did not care. At all.
Now, when I have an episode of irrational behavior, I find that once I have calmed down, I am deeply ashamed and sorry and feeling incredibly guilty. But, all that does not matter to the person who bore the brunt of the storm. I can feel as sorry as I want, but the damage has been done, and I cannot fix that. The only thing I can do is try not to do it again. The only thing that rebuilds the trust that is destroyed with each outburst is time (sometimes a lot of time).
I can remember a time about 4.5 years ago when I was so needy and clingy and alone and lonely and pretty suicidal that I was calling my mother way too much for comfort and sympathy. I was deep in the throes of a “woe is me” type pity party for one. I would call her several times a day, until one day, much to my surprise and chagrin, she refused to take my call. I couldn’t believe it! My own mother was refusing my call! At the time, she was my support system. My whole support system. She finally took one call, and explained to me that I was not to call her, I was not to come to the house (not even to do laundry), I was to return my copy of her house key which to this day, I have not gotten back, and that she simply had to distance herself from me. I had become more than she could take with all my suicide threats, crying inconsolably, being depressed about everything in my life (and not just that “low mood” type of depression either, this was the serious kind, where you very well may try to kill yourself to get it to stop). She told me she was seeing a counselor again because she could no longer handle her anger and sadness surrounding me. She told me that I had become toxic to her well-being. So, now, I am banned from contact, and I have been told that my own mother finds me toxic to her well-being, and that she was shutting me out to protect herself from me. I had no idea that I had become that bad.
In retrospect, however, I see why she had to get away from me. No mother or other loved one wants to hear on a daily basis that their child or wife or significant other wants to die, they are so alone and depressed. I was a toxic person. I was angry, depressed, constantly suicidal (hence the frequent flyer miles at the hospital), and I needed too much of her time and took all her energy without giving back. Every phone call was about some crisis real or imagined; never a call just to chat. All my calls were deeply depressing and angry. Anger at the world, anger that I had this illness, just a lot of anger and poison coming from me at that time. Therapy didn’t seem to be helping although I think that was when I was seeing Dr. Logan, not my usual therapist (she had dropped me because of a nearly fatal suicide attempt), and I was not comfortable with her, and couldn’t really let her know what was really happening with me. The meds didn’t seem to be working although they had done just fine in the past. So, I was pissed off about all of that, and I made the choice to take it out on my mother as if everything was her fault. So, yes, I see why for almost a year she did not want me in her life. She had to cut me loose because she herself was getting “sick” because I let everything out on her which was very unfair of me. Many times the things I was angry with her about had nothing to do with her. Which seems to be a recurring pattern.
Now, I am married. That’s a pretty big achievement for me. It is a big achievement for all mentally ill people because it means that you have become functional enough to have a relationship with someone who is not blood family. They have to love you even they do not like you. But, a complete stranger that you have to get to know, and they have to get to know you, that is f*&^% scary because what are they going to do or say when you drop the Bipolar bomb on them? They could run screaming, and then you get hurt (which we tend to guard ourselves very closely against), they could accept it as part of who you are, or they could accept it and want to find out more about it. Those are pretty much the three reactions I have experienced. My current husband (well, my only husband) had lived with two other manic depressive women before me, but they all manifested differently than I do. I tend towards paranoia, and that is not good for a relationship. I have a tendency to let little thoughts bother me to the point that they become full issues with lives of their own. And some of those little critters have teeth, and they do bite. I have told my husband that he doesn’t love me anymore (which is clearly untrue as we are still married), I have tried to throw my husband out of the house, and do not come back, I have accused him of cheating on me….. I have yelled and screamed at him about nothing in general, and I have taken out my anger and hurt about situations that were not anywhere close to his fault. He has told me that self-fulfilling prophecies are real, and if I keep it up, then one day, he may just go out and have an affair since I accuse him of it so much, or that if I keep telling him to leave, someday he may just pack his stuff up, and do that. That scares me. I love him, and cannot lose him despite all his quirks. Hell, I have a bunch of quirks too, and I am “difficult” to be around sometimes. I know where a lot of the abandonment issues come from, and they have absolutely nothing to with him. These are my own issues, and I need to realize that i need to work on these problems, and that no one can change them for me. They are uniquely my own. I fear being abandoned. I do not fear being alone. I was by myself for about 10 years, and they had their good and points, their own highs and lows. I have such a fear of abandonment that I do assume wrong things, imagine wrong scenarios, have paranoid thoughts, and yes, I do believe that if I do not stop with the accusing and telling him to get out, or get divorced (that is one of my big ones…. its difficult, so lets get divorced, it is too hard to fix, whatever), one of these days it will happen. He will have had enough of my tantrums that are directed at him but have nothing to do with him. He was not the progenitor of these problems and issues that I have. I am slowly learning that sometimes it is best to just keep things to myself, and not vent all my anger onto an undeserving person that actually loves ME even though I am ill,and can become quite ill very quickly.
I would imagine that the view from the outside creates resentment, anger, hurt when your loved one is threatening suicide, yelling at you for no reason that you can see because you are not the person that the Bipolar is really yelling at; they are yelling at the person(s) that have hurt them deeply, you just end up being the punching bag, and that is absolutely wrong for the ill person to do. Talking about it in therapy is the appropriate outlet because the therapist can provide guidance about what to do when you do feel an “attack” episode coming on. I am apologize to all the people that I have hurt and damaged due to my inability to control my mind – mouth connection. Mostly I want to say to my mother and my husband: Thank you for not cutting out on me, thank you for not giving up on me, thank you for loving me enough to stick around. Just thank you for putting up with me through the really bad times, and not leaving me alone, or throwing in the towel and just leaving.
I think the year or so that my mother would not speak to me, or even see me made me a stronger person. I tried like hell for about 6 months to change her mind, but that was futile. Now, I just have to make sure that I do not do that to my husband, he is a good man who does indeed love me even though I have been a real bitch to him at times. I am sorry. I am learning how not to always say what I feel, or act out on an innocent person. Most people have nothing to do with my problems, but I do not take out my ire on the people who deserve it because I am financially dependent on one of these people, and I cannot lose that help. So, I use other people for punching bags. And, for that, I am in the wrong. I can be very intense when I am angry, and I tend to make things sound worse than they are, and for that I am in the wrong. Nobody deserves to be used as someone else’s punching bag, especially when they are not party to the problem in the first place.
So, I apologize to all the people who have been there for me no matter what, and especially to my husband whose only fault is that he loves me. I will make a concerted effort to leave my problems with my therapist, and not allow them to ruin this relationship as I have others.
Manic -depression does not affect just the person that suffers from the illness, but all those people around them. It is an equal opportunity illness. One person has it, and fights daily to keep it managed (notice I never use the word “controlled”), and manic-depression affects all the people who love them sometimes in very negative ways. For that, I cannot apologize enough, even though I know only time will heal what I have done to people.
A Bipolar Journey Through The Rabbit Hole 