new raspberry; �HATES technological I am sick to death of erectile dysfunction, pass the tampons please |
Two Years of Hell Two Years of Hell So I think I�m not ready to ride the bi-polar express. Sure, I�ve been riding it downhill for two years now. Probably been riding it the entire length of our relationship albeit unknowingly. I don�t know if they�re going to be able to level her via medication. So far every drug but the most recent has resulted in severe (as in life-threatening) allergic side effects. The current drug seemed to be working well until the mood crash. And mood crash it was. Over the past two years I�ve been exposed to irrational behavior followed by more irrational behavior. The most recent crash came when things seemed to be going well. We�d been going to counseling, her bi-polar had been acknowledged, but not explored in the context of how it affects us since she�s still wrapping her mind around how it affects her, and I�ve been content to know that if medication can help her there is a chance we can get us right again. The mood crash came on the heels of our making arrangements with the neighbors to watch our animals while we took a trip to NY to see Mary-Chapin Carpenter. After the neighbors left she lit into me like I�ve never seen over the way I answered a question while the neighbors were there. Knowing the impossibility of getting her to see reason when she�s unreasonable, I told her I wasn�t going to have this conversation and walked away to another room. She followed, still spewing venom. Off to another room, and she still followed. Upstairs to my bathroom, close door, start to brush teeth and still she persisted. She�s ranting and raving, positively spitting that she�s calling a realtor and putting the house on the market. If I won�t leave she�ll sell the place out from under me. Somehow the mouthful of water I was rinsing with was ejected from my mouth into her face. Miracle of miracles�she shut the fuck up! Had I known it was that simple I�d have done it years ago. I guess I had just finally had enough. I started making plans that night for my future, a future that did not include her. I figured finances to see if there was anyway I could afford to keep the house. No way to do that, not even with roommates. Perhaps Dad would be willing to sell his place and come help me buy this one? Possible, but not practical. Sure he could swing it but much more sensible for me to move there with him. Room for all the animals, house is paid for, job market is good for me, etc., etc.�Are there two periods after etc. when it comes at the end of a sentence?�I spoke with him the next morning and of course he�s happy to have me. He�s getting up there and starting to get nervous about living alone, but not ready to give up his home, nor the kids in the neighborhood that he home schools. Fairly certain that I am now in the silent land of Coventry, you can imagine my surprise the following afternoon when she said we need to talk. I get the usual litany of my shortcomings and when she�s done I say you�re right we need to split. I want the car, the animals and a sum of cash. The car is not negotiable, the animals are not negotiable, the cash is. I know it�s a terrible time for her to be selling the house. It would put her in a terrible position both tax and capital gains-wise and that she doesn�t need to sell it to get away from me, I�ll go. She says she�ll give me whatever I want and need. Conversation over. So I went off to work (on a Sunday) to fix the phone system that was not playing well with the DST change. It took three hours to fool the phone�s computers into displaying the time I wanted them to display. Upon my return home, she commented that I looked happy. I replied that the look was not happiness but relief. I was not at all happy to see our relationship ending but was in fact relieved that the ordeal was over. I couldn�t do it anymore without drinking and that was an unacceptable option. At this point she burst into tears and said that she knew she was the problem, not me. That she didn�t know why she was doing and saying the things she was doing and saying, that she just couldn�t help herself once she got started. She�d written a horrible, horrible letter to her best friend the week before and the relationship would never be the same. She was driving everyone away so that no one would be around when she killed herself, etc., etc., etc. Please don�t go. She was so relieved this morning when I said I�d go, but after I�d gone off to work she thought no, she didn�t want me to go, not really. She finished by asking if I�d go with her to her psychiatrist appointment this week. Ah! A straw to grasp at. One last chance to redeem our relationship. I agreed. Not that the doctor was all that enlightening. He sternly told her that she wasn�t to make any life changing decisions until they got her leveled with medication. Given her historical response to the stuff they�ve tried so far, this could take forever. Given my lessening tolerance of her behavior this can�t happen soon enough. So I�ve been trying to asses just what our chances are here. We can�t do anything to salvage us until she gets her disorder under control which may be never. Once she does get it under control, can I get past 10 years of having been brow-beaten into believing that the problem is me when in fact it�s been mostly her? Do I even want to? These are the thoughts I was struggling with when the accident happened. To be perfectly honest, I was pretty much out the door. I�d told co-workers I was probably leaving, if not right away as soon as I deemed her stable enough for a parting of ways. It was going to take some time to arrange, but it was looking more and more like I�d be returning to the west coast. Then the unthinkable happened. It couldn�t have been any worse if she�d died herself. A young student on a motorcycle crashed into her car. He was going about 70 mph when it happened. When the vehicles came to rest she was physically unhurt but the mental damage done when she saw the rag doll his body had become resting under her front tire is untold. Immense. Unfathomable. It would be a difficult thing to deal with for a person who was sane and whole to begin with. So I�ve spent the last three weeks being strong for her and I am so tired. Tired of being strong. Tired of doing the right thing. Tired of once again putting everyone else ahead of me and what I want and what I need. I actually had plans to get quite drunk these past two days. She had one business trip that couldn�t be cancelled and I took two days off from work with the thought of curling up with a large bottle or two of vodka. But God was looking out for me. I have a nasty cold and I just couldn�t bring myself to get drunk when I was already feeling so miserable physically. Listening to: mid-day in kansas Smelling: dog food Reading: fast-preston ~ loving someone with bipolar disorder Mood: skeptical
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