I want to use this sticky post to say thank you for following my blog. Today I have reached 74 followers and I am extremely grateful that you have found something in my blog worth reading.
I would like to specifically thank Dyane, Glenn, Kitt, Susan, Zephyr, Christina and gottleap for their kindness in sharing their minds with me. Your loyalty is much appreciated and I carry it in my heart each day.
So, here I am, preparing to go teach again January. What I have found FEELING about it though, has really astonished me.
Once I started with the physical preparation…working out term planners, assessment plans, studying the Literature, I all of a sudden felt a sense of purpose again. At that moment I just KNEW that I was born to do this. Teaching is the only thing that I find makes me feel worthy to be alive. I do believe that all human beings have the desire to feel needed – not merely needed, but to OWN an aspect of their Life in which they feel they excel. Since I’ve stopped teaching, I haven’t been able to “perfect” any other aspect of my Life. The only thing I have ever been perfect at, has been teaching. Once again, I say this with humility.
What I have found through therapy is that I am such a perfectionist that when I find myself unable to do something to perfection, I just stop trying and give up. For example, when I stopped working I thought I would be able to become a better cook, seeing that I had the time now. But the fact is, I have never liked cooking and just couldn’t get myself to start liking it. I am not the perfect wife either…although I am at home all the time, with no social life whatsoever (which I believe must be so nice for a man because he doesn’t have to worry about his wife’s comings and goings), I am not sexually driven at all. My husband and I seldom kiss or hug and once a month I do “the duty” because I feel I have to try at least. Therefore I am a lousy wife. I also feel that I am not as good a mother as I should be. I do everything a stay-at-home mother should do…I get up in the morning and make them breakfast, pack their lunch, take them to school, pick them up from school, drive them to their activities, sit with them with their homework, bath them at night, put them to bed. But still I cannot get my son to behave and perform according to the expectations the school and society place upon a grade two. I have spent so much money on therapists and tests to try and find out how to understand his way of thinking so that I could be the best possible mother to him, but everything has failed thus far. A year ago I joined a gym, Curves. I thought I would be able to lose weight at last, seeing that I now had the time to work out. A year later I am still at the same weight. I have tried to stop smoking as well…let’s leave it at that!
I am good at nothing except teaching. Teaching is the only thing that makes me feel good about myself. And last year I messed it up with my Mania. But even now I keep wondering whether I should really start teaching again. The doubt I have is mainly rooted in selfishness, I guess. I have become spoilt at home. Mornings are my own now. When I go back to teaching, I will have no time for myself anymore. But then I think to myself: but you do inherently KNOW that going back to teaching will only do you good. I don’t have to work; my husband has an extremely successful business. And how many working women would love to have that opportunity! And then there’s the social anxiety I have developed over the past year. How would I be able to walk into a job again, surrounded by new colleagues? I am not afraid to work with children again…I’m not scared of them. I’m scared of the adults! What if the Manic behaviour I exhibited last year follows me to this school and I get thrown into a pit of embarrassment again? Do I really need to take that risk? Will I be able to survive it again? It was only through God’s grace that I survived last year!
Like I said in my first post concerning this opportunity, I do believe that nothing crosses your path without a reason. And if I am meant to start teaching again, the door will open.
For one entire weekend I went back and forth with my husband trying to decide whether or not I should take the job. My husband supported which ever decision I would make – which really helped. His only concern was for our children – as long as this new job didn’t interfere with our own children’s needs. He voiced another concern though. He knew what I was like when I taught: it consumed me. And all I could tell him was that I cannot know how it would affect me if I don’t try. And in the end that was the conclusion we both came to: I wouldn’t know if I didn’t try.
Therefore I went back to the school after the weekend and told them I would take the job. I got what I needed from the head of department and went home to prepare. As I was preparing I started to realize that this would be an inhuman task I wasn’t capable of. You see, about two years ago my country implemented a new school curriculum. This curriculum is of a standard my country has never seen before. And the curriculum is most strenuous on the Intermediate Phase: grade 4 to 6. I am to teach English Home Language to them and the Home Language standard has been raised to a level which is really unnecessary.
The teacher who taught them the first two terms did not implement this new curriculum. How she got away with it, I don’t know. So when I saw the catching up I would have to do, I saw days and nights of relentless work. I have always prided myself on my preparation. Throughout my career, my preparation has always been the aspect of my work that my colleagues envied. I am just too much of a perfectionist to do any aspect of my work half-heartedly.
It was a Tuesday night and for the first time in many months I completely lost my mind. I got so anxious that I shook and cried. My husband wasn’t home at the time and my poor children had to deal with a mother in such a state. The struggle that was starting to consume me was the struggle between ethics and selfishness. I told the management of the school that I would take the job and how could I go back on my word? On the other hand I knew I would lose my mind again after being stable for more than a year if I took the job. In the end I chose my own sanity over ethics. I couldn’t risk losing myself again. My husband had told me earlier that if I took the job and he saw any sign of me not coping, he would never let me go back to work again. We have gone through enough with my Mania last year and he would not go through it again. Therefore it only made sense not to take the job. If my anxiety levels already reached a state where I sat shivering and crying and I haven’t even begun to teach, where would my mind be within a week of teaching?
The Thursday I went back to the school and told them I couldn’t fill the post. I couldn’t tell them the truth of it though, for that I am too much of a coward. They were really disappointed though and I thought that would be the end of it. But once again they surprised me. They asked me whether I would not be willing to start in January. They realized that they would have thrown me into the deep end of the ocean by expecting me to come in and start teaching where this other lady so suddenly left off. And what could I have said? I felt so bad in going back and telling them no after I had already said yes. So I told them I would. I would be well prepared by then and the anxiety over not being perfect, would not exist.
I have told myself the following: if I am to go back to work, I will – the opportunity was given to me. If I am not to go back to work, they will find someone who can fill the post in a more permanent manner.
Even though I was “forced” out of teaching due to my MANIA, the teacher heart within me has never left me. I truly believe that if you were born to be a teacher, you will stay a teacher forever…even if you don’t formally teach as a profession anymore. And that is why this principal grabbed my heart in an instant. To sit in front of someone in desperate need for an experienced teacher, with children suffering due to the lack of decent education, is enough to make me reconsider where my Life is heading.
This principal was willing to adapt the whole school’s schedule around me…to fit into the responsibilities I wasn’t willing to give up to go back to teaching. I was amazed and couldn’t help but wonder why he was willing to move the world for a woman he has never known. Have they been unable to find any other teachers that they have become SO desperate? But it turned out that desperation wasn’t the case at all. They had other options but due to my so-called “reputation” they really wanted me. The two teachers who work there who I have known for years had praised my abilities beyond what I probably deserve and the principal had already phoned my previous boss and apparently he highly recommended me.
And therein lies my first struggle in considering taking the position or not. I am confident enough to say that I know I was a great teacher in comparison to the other teachers I worked alongside with over the years. I am very humble when I say this because I fail in every other aspect of my Life and therefore I WILL give myself at least that much. But when your teaching career ends due to your own irresponsible, MANIC behaviour, you start to question even this one thing you prided yourself on doing well. I am of firm belief that I will only be remembered for the MANIA I manifested during my last year of teaching and I cannot believe for one second that any of my colleagues will remember me for the great things I did for children in the 10 years that I taught. I believe this because they have disregarded me since I have left.
I even contacted my previous boss via text messages to ask him whether or not I should take the position. He encouraged me to take the position, which led me to believe that he did indeed recommend me for the position like the new principal had said. But then he ignored a very important text message I sent him – this message was important to me because it related to the risk it might entail to go out and work again. The fact that he didn’t bother to reply sent my mind into overdrive again. I haven’t contacted him ONCE this year concerning anything and I just needed him this once to calm my fears and doubts about myself. But needless to say, he went from me actually considering taking the position to me utterly doubting myself again. But then again, he doesn’t owe me anything, I guess.
It is difficult to explain how this affected me – how torn I felt between keeping myself safe and going out and doing the ONE thing I know I am good at.
I have kept from blogging over the past three weeks. Mostly due to an unexpected opportunity that crossed my path. And then the atrocities occurring in the Middle East really got to me and then Robin Williams died. So, I have really been kind of an emotional wreck the past three weeks.
Putting the atrocities and Robin Williams aside for now (because trust me, I really want to write about that later), I will start out by writing about the call I got from a school asking me whether I would be willing to go teach there. The teacher who taught the subject got hurt and they were in desperate need for a substitute. Not only a substitute though, but someone who would be willing to continue teaching in this position.
It came as such a surprise to me…and for so many reasons. Primarily because I haven’t mentally prepared myself to ever go to work again. And even if I ever considered going back to teaching, I never imagined myself returning so soon. Secondly, I was surprised that I was considered for the position due to the MANIC behavior I exhibited at my previous school…behavior which directly resulted in me resigning. Therefore you can imagine the anxiety I started suffering from when this opportunity appeared out of nowhere!
Now, I believe that nothing happens without a reason; that nothing crosses your path without it serving some sort of purpose. And I think it took me over three weeks to start writing about it because the purpose of this sudden opportunity weren’t exactly clear to me on the day I got the call. But throughout this process of making extremely emotional choices over the past three weeks, I have once again made some utterly amazing REVELATIONS about myself. In actual fact, I had a true “light bulb” moment last week.
I do not want to write about this 3-week journey in only one post; therefore I would rather like to write about it in a few posts. Mainly because I find it easier to share my thoughts via a constructive way of “sectioning” it (OMW…I think my English language use is already rusted…LOL)!
The man who phoned me is actually an ex-colleague of mine. We used to work at the same school but he left the school in 2009. He is now the Head of Department for English at this other school. When he phoned, I kindly declined the position. I told him that I don’t need to work anymore and that I am happy with just being a fulltime mother. Two days later another lady phoned me. She works at the same school and I have also known her for years. She is also a Head of Department at the school and we met through the regional meetings we used to attend together. And with this second call my Fate was sealed. I told her that I had no desire to go back to teaching but she asked me whether I would be willing to just come in the following morning and speak to the principal. I agreed to it as a mere courteous gesture.
The next day I sat in the principal’s office and he started out by telling me what he expects from a teacher. I respected the practiced speech from him because that is exactly the way a principal should interview a prospective employee. When he gave me a chance to speak though, I told him that I could not do what he expected from a teacher. I am now in a position where I can take my kids to school myself and pick them up again. I am now in a position where I can drive my children around to attend their sport activities and actively help them with their homework. At that point I thought he would start to realize that I wasn’t the ideal candidate for the position. But then he surprised me by offering me a schedule that would fit my every need. And I started thinking to myself…I am trying my best to find an excuse not to take the position but every time I am overwhelmed by the circumstances surrounding the opportunity changing…changing as though the opportunity “wants” to fit me.
I find crying extremely difficult. I believe crying is essential in processing loss, but since I started using Epilem, I find it hard to cry. I can remember so well how I used to be able to cry. Before I was diagnosed as Bipolar and believed I merely suffered from Depression, I used to cry wholeheartedly. I would have these crying spells where I would sit for half an hour and just shake and sob like a child.
Now, even when I feel real down and Depressed, I just cannot get myself to cry. At times I still experience the physical feeling of having a lump in my throat and tears welling up in my eyes, but the tears seldom spill over my cheeks. It’s as if I still experience the emotion with my whole being, but my body doesn’t want to physically let it go.
I believe not being able to cry is a terrible thing. Especially when you have known the RELIEF crying gives you. Crying is listed as part of The Loss Process because it has an extremely important purpose. It releases the physical tension brought on by emotional stress. All Mental Illness sufferers probably know how the “storage” of negative emotions takes a toll on the body. Headaches and back pain are just two of the most common manifestations. I am merely writing from my own experience, but I have felt the relief from headaches and back pain by simply crying.
Crying about a loss will not miraculously “cure” the negative emotions you are experiencing over the loss, but I do believe that crying releases the TENSION that builds up over the loss. After a good crying spell, I feel as if I can start tackling the mountain that has risen in front of me. I believe the need for crying stems from the desire we all still sometimes have to just be a child again. When you feel the pressure of Life, you reach a place where you just want to be vulnerable…where you just want to sit in a corner and cry and not be a responsible adult. A place where you just want someone to comfort you and tell you that everything is going to be alright. When you are a child and you get hurt and you feel the freedom to cry, your mother comforts you. And even if she cannot heal the broken leg by herself, her comfort alone makes you feel as though everything is going to be alright.
That is why I believe crying is a primal NEED we all have when facing a loss. It is a need we have because human beings long for support from others. And when your loss is the same as mine…the loss of friends and the social anxiety that derives from it, the need for crying becomes so much stronger. And without friends, you lack a support system which makes the comfort you need from crying, just so much heartbreaking. Sometimes I think I am too afraid to cry because I know there is no-one to hold me.
What I have learned from being incapable of crying is that I have become much more irritable. It is the typical cliché of bottling everything up and venting it in rage because you feel as though you don’t have the freedom to cry. For me that has been the danger in not being able to cry. I have no-one to confide in and am forced to keep everything within myself and at the end of the day my children have to deal with a mother who snaps at every little thing.
In my experience, losses suffered aren’t necessarily something which is FELT immediately. When I had to quit my teaching job last year due to my Mania, I only started FEELING the loss a few months later. And I believe the initial human reaction to any loss is shock. It was only when the anniversary of my hospitalization was drawing closer that I kind of did an “inventory” of everything that has come to pass since I stopped working so suddenly.
I have not been that naïve not to notice how my “friends” became fewer and fewer over the passing months, but it is only once you sit down and really take inventory of your Life that the shock seems to hit you straight between the eyes. I had to admit to myself that I have, without any conscious effort, reached a place in my Life where I am too afraid to go out in public; that I am too afraid to mingle with people; that I fear people’s opinions of me. Not only was it a shock to realize what a coward I have become; the biggest shock was to realize how much I have regressed. A year ago, after being released from hospital, I had all these aspirations of renewing myself and becoming a better me. Especially after finally understanding what having Bipolar Disorder means. And then it hit me…What does it help to understand why your mind works differently than other people? What does it help to finally make sense of all the horrible behaviour you have exhibited throughout your Life? All of THAT growth means nothing when you don’t even have the COURAGE to face ordinary people on a daily basis!
But the fact is we MUST go through shock when we suffer a loss. Simply because shock is the only way of bringing your mind to a standstill. Shock is the only thing which forces you to evaluate the situation you are facing. Shock makes you ask yourself the hard question: “How did I come to be at this place in my Life?” In actual fact, it forces you to go back and inspect the road you have chosen to take. Once you are faced with answering this question, you HAVE to open yourself up to find the answer.
But that is where we are privileged today. We live in a society where there are professionals to help us answer these questions – we don’t have to do all the work by ourselves. When suffering from social anxiety there aren’t really friends we can go to for support and if you are like me, family support also lacks a great deal. Therefore we must rely on our therapists to help us conquer this LOSS PROCESS.
I have found an honesty in my therapist. She doesn’t tell me the things I WANT to hear, she tells me the things I NEED to hear – doesn’t matter how much I hate it! I believe paying someone professional an hourly rate for objective advice is absolutely worth it. It is worth it because she has what I like to call a “no-love” obligation towards you. She isn’t in a position where she needs to be afraid that she would hurt your feelings. You pay her, so she MUST tell you the truth. And with the help of a therapist, you can start this process by most importantly searching for the root of your fear first.
Needless to say, I have been going through a rough patch the last 2 months leading up to the anniversary of my hospitalization. And the roughest part being the disappointment in the regression I have undergone. I knew I had to pick myself up again and move forward, but a lack of motivation hindered me.
That is when I started to ponder on how ENLIGHTENED I felt once I left the hospital in early August last year. The therapy I received there was a saving grace and it made me feel as though I could climb a mountain again. Therefore I came to the conclusion that somehow I had to get myself back to the mindset I had created in August 2013. And the only place to start was grabbing my old diaries and reading them again.
You see, I kept a thorough diary whilst hospitalized. With every therapy session I attended, I took detailed notes and at night I would take these notes and apply what I have learned to my own Life and the situation I faced. I kept this up even after I was released from hospital. But once I started blogging in October, I couldn’t keep writing in my diary. Time just didn’t allow me to blog AND write in my diary. Thus my blog became my diary in some way. I was so inspired by the things I learned in therapy that I wanted to share it through blogging. THERAPY and MEDICATION changed my Life completely and I wanted my experiences with these two aspects of HEALING to inspire others. Initially I didn’t want to blog about the things I did during my MANIC and DEPRESSED phases – I wanted my only focus to be on HEALING techniques. But as I started following other absolutely amazing blogs, I began to see that other Bipolar sufferers weren’t ashamed about writing about their “dark sides” and as time passed I started revealing a bit more about my own struggles. But throughout all these months of blogging, I have still not had the courage to completely admit all that I have done in the past. I don’t find it necessary though.
That is why I am honestly of opinion that if I go back to my original blogging goal – inspiration – I can lift myself up from this threatening pit of despair. The most valuable thing I learned about during my hospitalization is THE LOSS PROCESS. And once I started thinking about where to start with uplifting myself again, my heart told me to revise this process again. I have written about this process thoroughly in the past but I am grateful for the fact that my most loyal followers only started reading my blog AFTER I have written about it. Therefore I feel comfortable in the assumption that I won’t bore my loyal followers by writing about this process yet again.
And even if you do find this process tiresome, please bear with me. I really need this because I know it will refresh my mind yet again. But most importantly, I hope you might also find something valuable in this process to apply to your own life. I religiously believe in “paying it forward” and this process has revolutionized my way of thinking in the past.
Why a LOSS process? Because Bipolar sufferers’ lives are in many ways defined by the LOSSES they suffer due to their MANIA. And those LOSSES are what leads to the most devastating DEPRESSED phases we tend to undergo because we experience emotions so much more intensely than others.
As an introduction to this process, I will list the 18 steps of this process in this post and then elaborate on each step as the weeks progress.
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Before one can even start working through this process, it is important to NAME the loss you have experienced. You might feel that you have experienced many losses due to your illness and I feel exactly the same way. But it is important to focus on only ONE loss – the loss you find the most difficult to make peace with. I have come to the conclusion that the biggest loss I have experienced throughout the past year – the worst loss I have been struggling to accept – is the LOSS OF SOCIAL INTERACTION and the loss of COURAGE that accompanies it. And through following various other blogs, I know there are many sufferers out here who struggle with the same SOCIAL ANXIETY. With this LOSS PROCESS I will try and reach a place where I don’t only ACCEPT this loss, but RISE above it!
With my previous two posts I’ve tried to convey the overwhelming sense of LONELINESS I am experiencing. And with this post I want to convey the huge struggle I am faced with on a daily basis.
A month or two ago I read a piece by another blogger and I regret to say that I cannot remember who she was. She wrote about how the painful memories of her past comes to her and how she lets them flood over her, seeing that she cannot stop them from coming. And I thought to myself immediately: This is exactly what I have been experiencing and just couldn’t put into words. You see, I still struggle sometimes with the English language because I don’t think in English and sometimes I find it difficult to explain what it is I am feeling.
I have always called these memories ghosts. I call bad memories ghosts due to the haunting nature of ghosts. Isn’t it strange how good memories just do not tend to float around in your mind all day, whilst bad memories tend to jump at you without you asking? Why can’t the memory of my son’s birth or the memory of my wedding day just leap into my mind at any given moment? No, for good memories to fill my mind, I have to go and consciously search for them. Where as bad memories jump up at me whilst I’m driving the car!
Although there are triggers for these ghosts, most of the time they just jump me without any kind of stimulation needed. It is really as though I have no control over them. And it scares me sometimes. It scares me because it catches me so unaware and sends my mind down a very dangerous path. Most times I get this overwhelming feeling I can only describe as DESPAIR. How can I live with this for the rest of my Life? How can I go on with the memories of these terrible things I have done in the past? How can I live with myself! That is when I become suicidal. Suicide has never really left my mind and it is only the thought of my children that keeps me from it every time. I hate to admit this, but I have to if I want to be honest. When the ghosts really drag me down and the thought of suicide consumes me, I think of taking my children with me. I think this because I cannot let them live without me. I cannot leave them for my strict mother to raise. But then I think about my husband and how much he doesn’t deserve that. Therefore I will most probably never be as selfish to commit suicide, but this gives you an idea of how severely these ghosts affect my mind.
The main external trigger is seeing someone from my past connected specifically to my Mania. There is a specific trigger I want to write about. I sometimes wonder why God has placed this trigger in my Life. I go and fetch my kids from school every day. And on a daily basis I see a man there related to my horrible past. So every day I am reminded of the horrible behaviour I exhibited during my last extended Manic episode. At first I was more scared of him. I was scared that he would reveal my behaviour and that the other mothers at school would come to know about my past. That fear has left me since because it seems as though he has never made an attempt to talk about it to anyone. I think this is mainly due to the fact that it would reflect badly on him as well. But still, every time I see him I think about everything I had done. And I think to myself: God has most probably placed him here as a constant reminder of where I come from and how far I have come. God doesn’t want me to lose the fear completely so that I will forever stay humbled by the grace he has bestowed upon me.
But the ghosts that come haunting so unannounced, are the really scary ones. They are the ones that leave a physical impression on me – physical in the sense that I can feel the sickness in my stomach. I know this might sound crazy, but I know what despair physically feels like. I know this because I’ve felt it in the pit of my stomach on more occasions than I would like to admit.
My bad memories come in the strangest flashes and one flash would lead to another. The only thing that helps me to get rid of them is to close my eyes and will them away. I must keep my mind occupied at all times to withstand these ghosts and that is why they tend to attack me whilst driving. That is why I am so addicted to FB games. I spend hours on them when I don’t have to tend to the kids. And I read. I have now started with the Game of Thrones series after seeing the four seasons on TV and that will most probably keep me busy enough for the year to come!
I have to make peace with these ghosts now because they will remain without a doubt. I just hope that as the years progress, my handling of them will improve.
“The mother of all evil is speculation.” Now if that doesn’t apply to my own Life and regression, only one other thing comes to mind: UNCERTAINTY. Where speculation might be the mother of all evil, uncertainty surely kills you.
Speculation is the direct result of uncertainty. Therefore speculation cannot exist without the seeds of uncertainty. And in the year since my hospitalization, uncertainty has become my biggest downfall. Uncertainty has the tendency to consume my mind and being the extreme thinker and philosopher that I am, it mostly results in complete destruction.
You see, due to uncertainty, I speculate about people’s attitude towards me and I draw my own conclusions. The destructive part comes in when I have the courage to confront the person. And most of the time my conclusion had been wrong and I have to suffer the humiliation of it. So now I am faced with a Catch 22 situation: I’d rather suffer the uncertainty in silence and spare myself the humiliation of confrontation and as a result slowly disintegrate on an emotional level. But to be brutally honest, I don’t only suffer the uncertainty in silence for humiliation’s sake, but also out of fear for the TRUTH. And this is where the silence I have experienced from my former colleagues and friends comes to light.
When I was hospitalized, I received a lot of support from my colleagues and friends. For about two months after that I kept in regular contact with them and they even gave me a wonderful Farewell Party. By then I have admitted to all of them that I am suffering from Bipolar Disorder, although none of them knew of the Mania that brought on my Mental Breakdown. Only my boss knew the truth of my destructive Mania and I would still like to believe that he kept his loyalty towards me.
In the third month after my release from hospital however, a big story about me “broke” at the school where I worked. It was close to the truth, but in the end it was still not the complete truth. The gossip concerning this story nearly ended me and it will forever be the closest to death I have ever come. As always my husband supported me and it is only with his love and care that I got through it. At that time my boss was also extremely supportive in staying loyal towards me where he could’ve turned his back on me and let the vultures have their way with me.
With the type of man my husband is, he immediately put all kinds of restrictions on me. I was not to make any contact with any of my colleagues ever again and I was to relinquish all contact with any former students of mine. That was his way of keeping me safe. In the end he allowed me to keep in contact with three women from time to time and keep about five of them on my Facebook Friend List. Then in March, two of the three women suddenly stopped answering my text messages. And the other one, whom I have blogged about in the past, suddenly started answering my text messages in a very short manner – always seeming too busy to speak.
So this has all resulted in me experiencing a daily suffocating uncertainty about my former colleagues and friends’ feelings towards me. Not merely their feelings towards me, but I regret to say, their opinions of me. And needless to say, this uncertainty has led to speculation and the extreme social anxiety I now suffer from. If I really wanted to soothe my suffering, I could’ve asked them what really happened. I could’ve asked them to be honest with me about all that was said at school since I left and how people felt about me. But in asking that I knew I might be confronted with a truth I wasn’t ready to handle; a truth I might still not be able to handle. So I had to make a choice: being content with living with the slow strangulation of uncertainty every day or be courageous and straight up ask all these questions which have been haunting me. And I chose to be a coward.
Although I might have unwittingly placed this burden upon myself by shutting everyone out in October for my own safety, I still find myself overwhelmed by this silence from these people I once called my friends. I just cannot wrap my heart around the fact that I worked at a place for a decade just to be left and forgotten. And worst case scenario: even if my exit was full of speculation and gossip, the fact remains that it will always just be speculation and gossip. Never once did anyone ask me for the truth…never once was anyone loyal enough to just ask me. No, they chose to just ignore me.
But when I really think hard on it, it doesn’t bother me that much that I have no friends there anymore. There I have at least grown to a point to realize that if you can be so easily thrown away, they are not worth crying over. The big thing though that will remain is the uncertainty: the uncertainty of opinions.
“Silence can break your heart.” One of those image quotes I just saw whilst googling. And it pretty much sums up the overpowering emotion I have been experiencing…the emotion which has left me feeling so lost and disappointed in myself.
I can categorize this silence under two aspects of my Life. The silence I forced myself into due to my husband and the silence I have experienced from those I once called my friends. And on the anniversary of my Mental Breakdown I finally had to admit to myself that these silences have broken my heart.
My husband is an extraordinary man. A man who loves with more passion than anyone I have ever known. No-one, not even my parents, has ever loved me the way he loves me. Ours is truly a story of a man who met a sixteen year old girl and fell in love with her immediately. Ours is the story of a man who believes in loving through thick and thin, in sickness and health. Ours is the story of a man who loves despite the most terrible shortcomings a woman could ever have revealed to him.
When I was diagnosed, my husband was as supportive as I expected him to be. To him it had also been an explanation…at LAST…for this woman he loves with all his heart and the erratic behaviour she has been exhibiting since she was sixteen years old. He was beyond glad that he was able to say with certainty that I didn’t need to work anymore and that he could solely provide for us. Once he understood the triggers for my Mania, he was grateful that he was able to remove me from the environment in which the triggers existed. He was glad to have me home…the only place that offered me safety.
But as the months progressed I started noticing how much more DIFFERENTLY he started treating me when I got upset about something. In the past he would soothe and comfort me and motivate me to the point where I didn’t feel as upset anymore. But since I’ve been home it’s as though he doesn’t allow me to get upset anymore…in actual fact, he cannot stand me getting upset about ANYTHING anymore! Believe it or not, but he honestly believes that now that I have been diagnosed and am using the right combination of medication, that I should not be ABLE to get upset anymore!
I remember once when I got upset about something he said something like this to me: “How can you get upset now that you are using the right medication?” I was absolutely astonished! It then became clear to me that he really believed that my medication was supposed to miraculously “switch off” any kind of negative emotions. After that I allowed myself a few more times to share with him things that upset me. But a few weeks ago I vowed to myself…and to him…that I would never share my emotions with him ever again.
Every time I got upset about something…whether it was something concerning our children or something I found cruel that was done unto me…it would end up in a huge fight! The crux of the matter always came down to me not being grateful enough for the mercy God had shown unto me. And in the end I had to draw the following conclusion: I am not allowed to get upset about anything because God has blessed me TOO MUCH. Whatever Life throws at me, whether it be unfair or cruel, I must just take it and suck it up.
Now, I could’ve fought harder for my human RIGHT to remain HUMAN, but after a lot of pondering over the matter I had come to the following acceptance: I SHOULD be grateful for the public humiliation I was spared, I SHOULD be grateful to still have my husband after all I had done, I SHOULD be grateful for the safe and privileged Life I am leading. My husband works extremely hard. He has his own business at home and sleeps approximately 4 – 5 hours a night. He hardly takes any breaks in between, making his normal working hours about 19 hours a day. Although he works at home, we hardly ever see him. And the little we do get to see him, I believe should be without strife. My husband and I have been praying for years for the business to pick up so that I could stop working, and the prayer had been answered in the same month I was hospitalized for my breakdown. Therefore it had been God’s will for him to get so busy so that we could live a comfortable Life without me having to work. And who am I to question any part of it?
I might not be HAPPY in suffering alone…struggling with my ghosts and working through upsetting issues alone. But I must accept the reality: it could’ve been so much worse! I am safe, in my own home with my children, and cared for. My Life is one of constant loneliness because I have now lost the only confident left to me. But it is a loneliness I must accept to stay safe…a silence I have chosen myself to stay alive!
I can now comfortably summarize my marriage like this: two friends sharing a house. My husband works to such an extent that the children mostly share my bed at night and sex is non-existent…not due to a lack of interest on my husband’s side; I just have no desire to make love to a man I have no deep emotional connection with anymore. He loves me passionately…that I am certain of…and that is merely the end of it.
The REVELATION of being BIPOLAR 