Always October

October seems to be the month of change for me. Two years ago I moved back to NH,  last year a relationship ended, and this year I’m expecting my first child.

Yes, that’s right expecting my first child! She was unexpected but not unwanted. Ideally I’d have liked to settle into my new life a little more and gain a more stable footing, but I’ve learned that life and babies don’t wait for stability.

I know awhile back I said I’d keep you updated about managing fibro while pregnant, I just haven’t had the time to blog! I’m currently starting my 8th month and it’s only been in the last month that I’ve developed any annoying pains, all centered in my pelvis and back. With that said those are common late pregnancy complaints so I can’t even tell if it’s fibro or pregnancy or both. I’m glad that I was able to gain control of my symptoms well before pregnancy and I think that helped immensely.

Ill try to keep this blog updated more, but my life is so busy these days as I frantically try to prepare for baby.

Another October

We have the innate ability to continuously mark the passage of time. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, the passing of seasons, all serve to constantly remind us that time continues it’s perpetual march forward.

The passage of a year is a marker for which we constantly compare our lives. It’s how we mark progress and the lack of it. We also use it as an anchor to remember; how far we’ve come, where we’ve been, what we’ve done, and who we’ve loved and lost.

A year is coming up quick for me. A year has now passed since I started writing the next chapter of my life, it’s been a year since I moved back home to New Hampshire.

It’s been a good year, well as good as you can expect for starting a new chapter, the first year of a big change is always rough and I was naive for expecting anything different. It always takes time for you to re-root and flourish in the way you did before.

In this past year I’ve grown in ways I didn’t know were possible. I gained a lot and I lost a lot. If I look back at what I expected from this move I expected that I’d forge forward from where I left off, however I should have know starting over means just that.

I watched as my best friend and lover fell into the depths of depression and drug abuse. I watched as he triggered bipolar disorder, watched as he threw away everything he had ever worked for, I stood and watched him destroy our relationship.

I met the single greatest person I could ever meet at a time where everything I knew crumbled around me. I met someone who challenges me, someone who knows my faults and encourages me to face them. I met someone who has helped me see the mess that was around me and cared about me enough to help me through it.

I lost a beautiful apartment in the area I wanted to live. I moved back with my mother and see no immediate solution to that.

I worked one horrible job, that wasn’t for nothing it’s where I met the person who showed me there was better, and I’ve started another job that has more potential.

I’ve encountered economic hardship and finally have been able to recover from it enough to start putting away money for future dreams.

I bought out my car and have something of value that I will fully own in time.

I got an official diagnosis and managed almost a full year without daily pain medication.

I’ve made new friends and have had new experiences.

As hard as this year was, it was also beautiful and full of life.

I’ve learned and grown a lot and I’ve prepared myself well for next year and those after it.

It was a year well needed and a year well welcomed.

I start this year with a newfound sense of hope. Things can only get better as I continue to write this chapter and slowly carve out a space in which to live.

Happiness

It was a feeling I’m not soon to forget. I was taking the long way home yesterday after stopping to get groceries.

I rounded a corner, going slightly down hill, windows open, music blaring, and my hair a hot mess. It was a beautiful night, warm, and as I rounded that corner and I saw the mountains in the distance I realized that I was finally happy.

Happiness is something you always try to convince yourself you have, at least I know I have in the past. I tried to tell myself that I was happy, but I just wasn’t appreciating all that I had, that I had a problem with only focusing on the negatives in life.

That’s not the case. I’m glad that I realized this at 25, I think I’ve saved myself a lot of future stress. When you’re truly happy you forget the small things, you’re able to accept the negatives as a part of life and you can move on.

Three months ago I walked away from an abusive relationship, completely starting my life over, moved back with my mother, and started dating a remarkable man.

In these short three months I’ve realized true happiness is feeling at ease in your life. I have been through stressful situations, the relationship didn’t end well and I’m still dealing with the aftermath. I’m living with my mom now and that’s stressful, but for once I’m not worried about it. I know it’s all going to work out.

Another benefit I’ve realized that comes from being happy is that I have over come a lot of what triggers my anxiety. This for me is a really big deal. I’ve stopped trying to micro-manage my life.

Let’s also discuss fibro. It’s now been half a year since I have been living without medication. I get flare ups but they’re never at the scale they used to be. The best part is it no longer affects my intimacy. I can me touched and cuddled by my man and it doesn’t bother me in the ways it used to. This is a good thing because he’s 6’3″, 240lbs.

Anyway, I digress, these past three months have been amazing. I’m glad to finally have found someone who understands me, works with me, and forces me to work on neon a better person. He’s my compliment, we’re similar enough and different enough to make this work.

Also, even though we’re both living with our parents at the moment and seeing each other on weekends, it keeps the relationship new. Every time I see him it feels like the first date all over again and I want to prolong that feeling for as long as possible.

Changes, So Many Changes

The past month has been a complete and utterly destructive (in a good way) whirlwind.

I don’t even know where to being so I’ll start from the beginning, that’s usually the best.

I broke up with my boyfriend of 5 years, Kurt, and started dating my co-worker, Max.

The gears for this had been set in motion long ago, and if I’m being honest with myself it started back on Long Island.

My relationship with Kurt had been going south for quite sometime, but for selfish reasons, and for the hope that it would get better, I stayed with him.

When we moved back to New Hampshire it became clear that it wasn’t going to work out. He had his manic episode and said a lot of things, compounded on prior things he’d said, that made me question wether or not he actually cared about me.

Enter Max. Max was one of the first people I clicked with at work. It was a slow evolving friendship. He’d sarcastically sass me and I’d do the same, however he’s much better. I remember the first day he sassed me and I spent the rest of the day thinking of the perfect comeback, when I finally ran into him I said it and his response was so quick and so perfect I knew I had to be his friend.

Flash forward to March. It’s our other co-workers birthday and Max refuses to get free pancakes at IHOP alone. I go with him. We realize we have far more in common than we ever thought. Also at this point we had been texting like crazy, texting until the early hours of the morning 1am, 2am, you get the idea.

Before this I had been wrestling with my feelings about him. I was unsure if I liked him because he was paying attention to me or if I honestly did have genuine feelings for him. I had a dream in this time span where we were just cuddling on the floor watching tv. I shoved the feelings deep, deep down not wanting to admit to myself that I was falling for him.

The week of my birthday was when it became extremely clear that something was happening. I had a little too much to drink at a friends party and texted him this,

“I can’t tell if I like you or not”

He then drove 20 minutes on a Monday to celebrate my birthday eve with me and some friends. Kurt refused to walk the 5 minutes to the restaurant because it was past his bedtime (9pm). Max then proceeded to come to my birthday party that next weekend.

It was then, the next Tuesday when we went on a date that I realized if I was going to keep down this path I’d be cheating on Kurt which I didn’t want to do so that Thursday I ended it.

A month later and here we are.

Currently both our lives are a little chaotic and this relationship is going to get even more interesting than it already is. Honestly, whenever I meet his friends they can’t believe how alike the two of us are and the same goes for my friends. It always makes me laugh because mentally, spiritually, etc we’re the same kind of person but physically we’re polar opposites. He’s 6’3” and I’m 5′ exactly. He weighs about 260, I’m 110. Not to mention I clean up well, and he’s got this huge beard, shoulder length hair, and wears metal t-shirts. I love it. I love all of it.

It all just feels so effortless with him compared to how it felt like a constant uphill battle with Kurt. Not to mention since we were friends before he knows all of the baggage I’m carrying and isn’t phased by it. I also know his and I’m not concerned.

I realize I digressed a bit, when I was saying it was chaotic we’re both actually in the process of moving back to our parents. Kurt won’t let me back out of our lease early and I can’t continue living with him because he’s not handling this break up well at all. This weekend is when it all goes down.

I’m also interviewing for a new job today, at a Credit Union, as much as I really want a new job I’ll admit that I’m going to miss seeing my eye candy at the printer and casually running into him on the floor, that and eating lunch with him.

I should also tell you the bigger news in my life right now.

I went to the rheumatologist last week and FINALLY, FINALLY, FINALLY, got the diagnosis of Fibromyalgia. However, the rheumatologist and I decided that medication for me at the moment isn’t the right option. I told her the main reason I went was to finally solidify a diagnosis as to what is wrong with me and that I had the feeling it was Fibro all a long and that I was treating myself as if that’s what I had. We decided that at the moment what I’m doing is helping and that I just need to continue to watch stress, diet, and attempt to exercise more.

We did decide that if my symptoms get worse again, back to what they were, we can always reevaluate medication, but we really want to exhaust all options first because she and I both agree that I don’t want to rely on the pain meds for the rest of my life, I am only 25.

So for now my life is on the up and up. I’m finally happy, which it was a big thing for me to realize and admit that I was extremely unhappy in that last relationship. It was just draining me in so many different ways, and honestly I was convincing myself that I was the problem when I wasn’t at all.

I called it when I said 2014 would be the year of change. I couldn’t be more excited for where my life is heading and the trajectory I’m now on.

Let’s see what the summer brings now.

2 months

Really, I’m ashamed. 

I have been absolutely terrible about keeping this blog up-to-date. Seriously, it’s really, really, bad. 

I suppose it’s because my life here is not as interesting as it used to be. My work drama is summed up in that I just work with idiots who in all actuality don’t make my job any harder, they just make it more mind-numbingly boring. 

I would like to tell you how the Fibro Support group I joined is going but I am never able to make their meetings because they occur at 5pm which is when I get out of work. Needless to say I don’t think that’ll be working out. 

I do have some news though on the Fibro front. I have now gone two successful months without medication. Honestly, I attribute ALL of this to the significant decrease of stress at my job. I don’t take this job home with me and I don’t actually care about it at all. 

I was talking with someone recently about it and I realized I was so stressed at my last job because it demanded a lot from me. Since I personally knew the owners and it was a small, family, business I felt compelled to always go above and beyond. It’s different when a boss asks you to do something than when the owner of the company, who’s also your friend, asks you to do something. Where I work now I’ve never met the owners, and it’s a company with more than one office and the bar the standards are set to is so low there is really no need to try. Which is perfect for me. 

That is not to say that I don’t do my job to the best of my abilities, it’s clear I do, they keep giving me more responsibility, but at the end of the day if I don’t finish something I don’t care that I didn’t get it done, no one is going to call me later that night to check up. They’re also not going to ask me to work overtime. 

I really can’t explain what it feels like to be able to go day-to-day without taking meds again. I feel like I finally have a grasp on this thing after years of it only getting worse it’s finally starting to be something I can manage. Which is all any of us can ever ask for! 

I’m not saying that miraculously my symptoms went away or that I never flare. I actually just had the mother of all flare ups. 

I came down with a cold/flu/sinus infection pretty quickly on Thursday and by Friday morning I couldn’t move. Does this ever happen to anyone else when they’re sick? It’s like my lower back and shoulders instantly become the most painful places. It’s funny because I feel like it’s my body just giving up on attempting to control the pain signals and instead forcing all its efforts on fighting whatever illness I have. 

But enough of that. I feel like every post I have written has been me just talking about how great I’ve been feeling. Honestly though, I’m just waiting for it to end. I feel like something could change and I could go back to needing the meds again. Regardless I’m hoping that my trip to the doctor in a few weeks finally gives me some answers. I really don’t care what’s wrong with me, at this point I’ve learned to live with whatever it is, but I just want the comfort of knowing once and for all this is something chronic, something not yet curable, and most importantly not something worse. 

And one last little note here, I can’t remember if I mentioned this in my last post or not, but I am finally getting back to doing photography and working on a body of work. I’m really excited about my ideas. I’m giving myself a year to compile an ongoing body of work so that I can maybe apply to artist is residency programs abroad as well as start submitting my work into shows. 

I’ll keep you updated on everything as it happens. And yes, this is another empty promise to post more.

Week Alone Movie Nights: War Horse

One of the big things I’m doing during this week alone is watching all the movies I’ve ever wanted to.

Saturday night was Thor.

Sunday was The Breakfast Club.

Yesterday I was planning on watching another 80’s classic I just haven’t seen, Say Anything, but as I got home I said to myself, no I’m going to watch every movie Tom Hiddelston has been in (there’s not many and most of them I’ve seen) so I watched War Horse.

I forgot that I told myself in 2011 when it came out I wasn’t going to watch it because I heard it was unbelievably sad. Mostly I forgot it was about a horse during WWI. I essentially thought it was a movie about a war general who was given the nickname “war horse” for his prowess in battle.

It’s not a movie about that at all.

If you haven’t seen War Horse don’t….unless you fully realize you will cry for 2.5 hours without stopping.

I lost it in the first ten minutes when the damn horse plowed the field and from that moment out it was all downhill, every scene that followed produced more tears than the last.

My crying ranged from a few stray tears escaping during especially heartwarming scenes, like when Joey meets Topthorn after the first battle and they’re best friends, to full on gasping for air, can’t see at all, tears streaming down my face crying. Every time I started to collect myself it just started up again.

It was so much emotion for me I had to look up the plot synopsis to see if it had a happy ending because I was certain if it didn’t I wouldn’t be able to handle watching it.

I just felt like sharing this because it’s not often that anything gets me to cry and there has been nothing that has ever made me cry that hard or that long…..ever.

Not sure what’s on tonight’s agenda as far as movies go, but I know for sure it will have to be lighthearted I don’t think I can handle any more emotion.

A Week Alone

Today is the start of my week alone. The man is off in Turkey for the week visiting family. I’m still rather upset about this trip because he booked it while he was in his mania and told me point blank I wasn’t allowed to go because everyone would talk about me in Turkish.

He knows how much I hate that. I do think it’s rude when I visit his family and they feel the need to talk about everything in Turkish when I know they all speak English. An attempt at speaking English would make me feel welcome.

But I digress.

I am ashamed to admit that I’ve been neglecting this blog. I would love to say its because there are a lot of fun and exciting things going on in my life but that is not the case. The highlight of my days has been exploring Pinterest’s new ‘Explore Interests’ feed.

I don’t know how they found a way to make a terribly addictive site even more addictive, but they did.

 

Here is a little sample of what my interests page looks like. Can we all just admire for a minute that the biggest squares are; Tom Hiddelston, Jon Snow (2x), Time lords, Gin Fizz, and Loki. I mean this isn’t perfect yet their algorithm can’t be 100% accurate. I’m not sure if I like cheesy baked chicken more than I like marinated flank steak. Or that Bruno Mars even has a place on this…let’s just say I was a million times more excited to see The Chili Peppers at Halftime than him. Also, come on they only played one song!? I’m just glad it wasn’t off their new album.

But I really feel like I need to talk about my new-found admiration of Mr. Tom Hiddelston. It was purely due to reading The Sun Also Rises, and realizing that the scene where Owen Wilson is talking to Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Dali in A Midnight In Paris pretty much rips off the entire first part of the book, that I realized Mr. Hiddelston was F. Scott and I suddenly remembered that he is a damn fine looking man. (My sister says it’s because he looks like my Grandfather)

I’ll find a picture of my Grandfather younger so we can compare sometime. But isn’t he just dashing? Not many people can pull off a houndstooth blazer.

In my compulsive watching of Thor, Avengers, and the only other movie of his on Netflix, The Deep Blue Sea, I’ve learned to appreciate the grace with which he acts. It’s beautiful to watch him. But besides his obvious good looks and talent he’s actually an amazing guy.

I found this via that Interests feed.

Unicef – Tom Hiddelston

Can you say amazing? As I was reading I couldn’t help but think he’s not as public about his charity work as other celebrities are. I then looked at the comments and realized the entry with the most only had 10. Also, he did this a year ago. You’d think with his fan-girl base you’d have a lot of people commenting about it. Nope. Not that many. Which is awesome.

But that’s enough of my fan-girling, you get enough of that. Anyone else excited for Walking Dead??? I know I am, but unfortunately I’ve got to wait for the boy to come back to watch it with him.

My week is going to be spent drinking wine, reading some more Hemingway, and hopefully some more blogging. Also I’m going to be wildly dancing and signing about my apartment and enjoying the entire bed to myself! There is no greater pleasure than having the entire bed to yourself. I have desperately needed a copious amount of alone time.

Oh, I almost forgot I have now gone a month without Tramadol. I am insanely proud of this. I don’t know what I did to be so lucky to have my pain level decreased so dramatically. I was looking back in my pain journal from this time last year and I was averaging 6-9 a day now I’m around 3-5. I’m really thinking it was mostly due to stress, perhaps glutamate as a second.

My theory is that I had such a bad build up of glutamate that reducing it and taking the Tramadol daily helped my body to convert the rest to GABA. Don’t take my word for it, that’s just my theory.

I also am proud to say I joined a Fibromyalgia support group here that I’m really excited to start going to. I need to meet more people that experience the same things in life that I do. Did I tell you about my co-worker Donna who was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia to her surprise.

She wasn’t even concerned with the pain! And she got diagnosed! It makes me wonder how I’ve been complaining about the pain for so long and no doctor is willing to believe me yet. I asked her what doctor she goes to and she said she doesn’t! She said she doesn’t care about the Fibro and that it doesn’t cause her any discomfort! How unfair!

Anyway it’s about time I wrap this up I’ll be running out of things to talk about and then I won’t be blogging for another three weeks.

I’m Off To A Good Start This Year

I seriously need to start paying more attention to this blog! The good news is I moved around my apartment me yesterday and I placed my computer in the living room so that now I can hopefully blog a bit in the half hour time span I have of some downtime before I go to work. It’s nice my living room/kitchen area is finally coming together nicely and I’m finally starting to settle back into a nice routine. I must say it is really refreshing to have two consecutive days off on a weekend!

The boy is also fairly back to normal, which is good. We’re both nearly 100% sure it was a manic episode however small it was because he finally started to get a lot better when he started taking lithium.

However there are these new personality quirks he’s developed, they might have been there all along and I didn’t notice them though. For instance he’s now terribly addicted to his phone. Wherever we are, whoever we’re around, and whatever we’re doing, he’s got to be on his phone. I really don’t even know what he’s doing. It’s horrible, it’s embarrassing, and it’s rude. The other night we were having dinner with friends and playing Risk and he was watching tv on his phone in the middle of the game. I was so mortified. My friends have started asking me not to invite him when we go places because he’s that annoying.

Alongside this little phone tick he also has to be the center of attention otherwise he thinks whatever we’re doing is boring. If no one’s paying attention to him his jokes get cruder and cross more lines. He becomes abrasive to the point where no one engages him and he just retreats into his phone. Instead of being a normal person and just listening to the conversation or paying attention to something boring he has to make it all about him.

As I said I don’t know if these traits were always there and I never noticed because we didn’t go out much and when we did go out he was nowhere to be found? I don’t know but it sure as hell is annoying his complete lack of social tact.

And on another final note because I’m very quickly running out of time, I’ve been tramadol free since Christmas. It wasn’t a resolution or anything, this year I didn’t make any resolutions. It was simply due to the shipment didn’t come in time and I had already gone three weeks without it and felt ok. I obviously don’t feel 100% but still flares are down, I’m sleeping (well lately I haven’t been sleeping well but it’s not due to pain it’s due to restless mind syndrome), and most importantly day-to-day I feel like what I felt like in college.

This is good because I was managing my pain pretty well in college it was post college that it got completely unbearable. However, I did have a terrible flare the other night and took tramadol and I wasn’t able to sleep on it. It was odd because I had always been able to sleep on tramadol, heck tramadol put me to sleep. Now the opposite is true so I have no idea what I should take at night when it gets really bad. I’m hoping it’s just a weird thing and isn’t the tramadol and it’s more to do with extra caffeine intake after 1pm.

But either way I’m excited that I no longer need daily pain medication in order to control my symptoms. I’m glad that I’ve finally gotten back to a decent level of day-to-day pain. My main ideas around the contributing factors were reducing the level of glutamate I was consuming, lowering my stress level, and forcing myself via medication to get deep, restful, sleep. Now when I’m flaring I just take a hot bath with a muscle relaxant epsom salt mix I found at CVS then go lie on the spoonk mat for 45 minutes.

Honestly, the bath is hands down my go to now. I like to track how long I feel amazing for when I try a new pain relief method and with the spoonk I felt good for a few hours, but with the bath I felt good for half the day.

Here’s hoping that I’m going to be feeling this way for the foreseeable future, enough so that I can try hiking again this summer, because hiking is right up there with swimming as my favorite outdoor activity.

So in a nutshell my life is going smoothly again and I’m really just going to wait and see what unfolds and go in whatever direction seems best. Here’s’ hoping that I start posting more, perhaps I’ll post some pictures of the new place for you now that it’s starting to come together.

2014

It’s time for that obligatory post about my plans and goals for 2014.

This year I figured that I’m saying goodbye to the list of resolutions that I will accomplish only very half-assed. No, 2014 is the year of no resolutions, of no long-term goals, and no plans. I need the ability to be able to just ride the waves that life is bringing me and making decisions when decisions need to be made.

The only thing I’m hoping for is that I have the stamina and the drive to make it through this year. I’m not kidding myself here, it’s not going to be easy. Not with my relationship falling apart a little more every day. It’s not going to be easy carving out an entirely new way of living, so far I’ve done a fairly decent job at it, but this wrench is really starting to disrupt the sense of normalcy I’ve created.

The end of 2013 saw drastic changes in my life as I had known it.

– I moved back to NH and as wonderful as that has been I realize it wasn’t exactly what I dreamed it would be.

– I got a new apartment that I love but have to face the truth that I might not be here long

– My relationship of 5 years is very, very, quickly falling apart for reasons completely outside our control

I mentioned it in the last post that my boyfriend and I are fairly sure that he triggered bipolar. On good days he completely ignores me on the bad days his temper is ruthless, he’s never physically hurt me, but the things he’s said have caused me to become very emotionally distant. At this point I’m waiting for the day when he means what he says when he says ‘it’s over’. Hell, he’s already told all my friends and family that it is, yet when I start going through the motions of leaving he quickly changes his mind and tells me ‘I want you to stay’.

Unfortunately I don’t think our relationship is strong enough to survive this if it turns out to be bipolar disorder. I do understand that something is wrong with him, regardless of what that something is, but having to deal with two chronic disorders is not something I think I can handle. I’ve got a very loose grip on my problems, I don’t have the time or energy to tiptoe around his emotions and his irrational decisions.

As I said before, I’m hoping that I just have the strength to make it through 2014 and to make the decisions that I have to in order to go down the best path possible for me.

As always I will keep you updated. I also want to put this in here I got the most awesome thing for Christmas. I forget where I heard about this, some blog or fibro site, but it’s called a Spoonk Mat and what it is, is an accupressure mat. I love this. Seriously, I use it every night and it makes my lower back pain disappear for a few hours and makes me sooooo sleepy.  It was $60.00 well spent in my opinion.

 

Everything Falls Apart

It’s funny how things never, ever, work out the way you think they’re going to.

Here I was so excited to finally be back where I wanted to be.

I was excited to be in a new, beautiful apartment, in the part of town I wanted to live in.

I was excited to finally start planning for my future.

And in the week we moved here those dreams shattered and crumbled to a million tiny pieces.

I feel like I can talk about this openly here because many of you who read know and have been through similar things and will understand completely where I’m coming from.

I haven’t been candid about this because it was something I never truly considered was a problem…my boyfriend has/had a propensity to use recreational drugs. This has been a staple in his life even before I knew him. It never harmed anything and I didn’t care as long as it didn’t truly effect me.

It got bad on Long Island when he started taking research chemicals, one in particular MXE. At the worst with that he took it and convinced himself he was having a stroke and was admitted to the emergency room, ambulance and all. I ended up staying there with him for hours. I got there around 5pm and we finally went home around 1am. At that moment I told him I was never going to do that again and if he valued our relationship he’d stop.

I thought he had stopped.

Apparently moving here was stressful for him in ways I didn’t imagine possible. He starting taking that along with xanax at my moms house. I didn’t even realize he was taking it again until it was to late.

Around Thanksgiving it all changed. We’re both nearly 100% certain he triggered a manic episode and now is in the throes of bipolar. We say this because the same thing happened with his father. Also, all the signs fit. It’s like my fibromyalgia. It’s not 100% diagnosed yet, but we know that’s what it is.

The last three weeks have been horrible. He is CONSTANTLY talking to others (where he never did before), he talks to perfect strangers which is something he’d never have done in the 5 years I’ve known him. He’s also attempting to become more fluent in Turkish & German by talking (all the time) to his family in Turkey. He’s attempting to make these crazy business deals…he legitamately thinks he can start a business deal with a Turkish Company with his….he’s going to stores and asking who does their packaging because he wants to make these deals. He’s also lost all sense of the value of money. He keeps spending, and spending, and spending. Which is NOT his behavior at all in the 5 years I’ve known him he’s been SO stingy when it comes to spending money.

He’s made an appointment with a doctor because at least he, somewhere deep down, believes something is wrong. His family isn’t helping because they literally think that he’s just come to his senses about me.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the biggest and hardest thing is that he’s treating me like crap. Somehow he’s blamed his mania on me, that he was taking all these drugs because he was ‘unhappy’ with our relationship. I know he’s just baiting fights because I know that behavior. However, it’s SO difficult because I feel like I’m walking on eggshells. Things I haven’t even touched or said somehow are used against me. He misplaces his tablet and it’s my fault it’s missing. He keeps telling me we’re incompatible and that if we broke up we’d have lost nothing in our relationship. He even told me that he thinks I’d be a terrible mother because I’m cold, heartless, and not at all tender (which I really don’t think is true).

In all that I’ve been reading about bipolar it seems as if that’s a standard treatment of loved ones that this disease is alienating for those who care about someone who suffers from it and that it’s the hardest part to work through.

My journey with this is just starting, yeah it’s at a horribly inconvenient time, but when was it ever going to be a good time?

It’s just crazy, I have no idea how I’m going to go about doing this I keep thinking how my life will be juggling our life now with two very different chronic illnesses. I hardly have the energy to take care of myself and now there’s the very real possibility that I’ll just have to put my health on the back burner and take care of his.

Seriously, I don’t know if I can do this and I don’t want to be considered a horrible person because I can’t manage it. Part of me keeps saying, ‘you care about him you need to stick around’, the other part of me says ‘you don’t deserve this, you deserve better don’t worry about him’. It’s sickening, horrible, and I’m all together just stressed out because I can’t even have a proper conversation with him about it.

I guess my question is how do you, as a loved one, deal with someone who has bipolar?

I’ll keep you updated as we find out more, when we finally get a solid diagnosis and are working towards a solution.