I am the first to admit being around me, being my friend, living with me is NOT an easy thing to do. Every day the rules of being near me change. For no apparent reason, and you may not even know they have changed, but I will punish you for not following my rules of being near me.
Some days I feel like having a chat. Other days I'll slap you cross eyed for even breathing the same air as me. Not because you did anything. Just because that is the roller coaster that it is bipolar. Our emotions twist and turn and pull us along for the ride. For the most part, we have little control over which direction we are pulled especially those like me who are unmedicated. While I know it's very difficult on those around me, I think the thing most people don't understand is how difficult it is on me.
I don't want to be the way I am. I would love to be able to control my emotional roller coaster. This past week was the first time Jigger saw such an explosive reaction from me. During the four years we've been together I have managed to hold it together pretty well. Yes there have been yelling matches, but nothing as explosive as this past week. It scared him as much as it shocked him. One second he was arguing with me and the next he was a deer in headlights. Frozen in place. I don't even think he took a breath for a few seconds.
When he finally did breathe, all he knew to do was to clean up the blood. What I think frightened him the most was that I had been bleeding for close to an hour with absolutely no idea that I had even been hurt. Blood was caked in my hair, dried on my face, smeared on the bed, walls, across everything I had touched in that last hour. The lights were off so the room was dark and I couldn't see. When he turned the light on to see why I flinched when he touched my hand, it was quite a shock for him and me. The sight of the blood shocked me back to reality for a moment. I went into auto pilot. Cleaning the wound, making a temporary bandage that would hold til morning when Jigger could go and buy some proper things.
I wish I could turn back time. I wish I could be able to find the words to express the chaos that is running through me, but I can't and when the words become too loud, too confusing, too chaotic, then I explode. I push people far away. Not letting or wanting them near me and when the chaos subsides, I start to pull them back close to me. Except they don't usually want to be close to me any longer. The explosion has usually pushed them so far away that they don't want to experience it again. I mean honestly how many people want to live at the top of an active volcano? It's not an easy place to live near.
That's why I usually just keep people away because I know eventually the explosion will take place and they will run. If I keep them away, then there is no need to fear that some day they'll leave. There is no need to worry that one day I'll do something stupid that even I can't explain and will cause them to love me a little less. Until one day there is no love left at all. Living inside my mind is not an easy place to live. I'm lucky in many ways. Even though Jigger and I have our problems, he never runs from the explosions. For that I am truly blessed.
4 comments:
Maasiyat,
WOW! Nicely written. I hope things have calmed down for you. Probably couldn't write in that state anyway. I am lucky I, too, have found someone who would not run from the craziness. She held out hoping I would find peace sometime in our lifetimes. If you ask her, she'll tell you it was worth it. I don't know how, but I am thankful.
Wow. I could have written those words. I have felt those exact feelings. Seen the deer in headlights. Felt the raw power of knowing you are capable of scaring people. It's a high. It's the adrenaline. It's a power trip. You don't feel your wounds, physical or emotional. You don't feel other's wounds, physical or emotional. You scream, they show fear, you scream louder, more fear, but they have not yet paid enough for their indiscretion, so you find something to throw, they dodge, and so it goes. Until you've exhausted the gas tank of every cell in your body. And then the pain comes. In a wave. All the pain. The physical pain and emotional pain, yours and everybody elses. It washes over you and takes your breath away. The guilt and shame and pain. You caused it. All of it. And you will never be able to take it back. How do you deal with that? Do people understand the mere logistics, the physics, the utter impossibility of this kind of back-and-forth would send most people running for their lives across the nearest cliff? But we persevere. We continue on. Every day. We inhale and exhale, one foot forward, force a smile, beg for forgiveness for the unforgivable. Oh, how I know what you are feeling. I know. I live there, too. You are a hero to me, you know.
meredith, yea this happened almost a week ago and I'm just now sort of processing and writing it out. I thought it was important to write about this because most people don't understand that we hate what we're doing as much as they do.
Aimee, when you write like that, it makes me able to push through the next day. Your encouragement, your support is what has held me up and together these last few months. You definitely are my Sam.
So I am on the opposite spectrum. I am that guy who is not giving up. So my question is. When you come down after a manic state do you have it emotionally in you to appreciate the other person staying. And do you eventually say thanks at least or anything else to let them know you are grateful for staying around. I am currently sticking it out and calmly waiting for the woman I love to come down. I dont really need the reassurance of me staying I just want to be able to tell if she loves me or if I am jist a byproduct of her mania. I mean if it was jist tje mania that brougjt her into my life wouldnt it be unhealthy for me to keep trying to get her to be a part of my life. As painful as it is to lose her, I dont want to be a constant trigger for her either. So how can I identify if its love for her. Or if I am just somone she can depend on to pick her up after the fall. Of which I'm not complaining. But it is becoming a little more heartbreaking each time.but if she really does love me then it will always be worth it.
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