Daily Archives: May 21, 2013

After two calls and a text begging for “helk” (my kid’s version of help that he finds so funny) I went into the shop to assist R. I was not happy about it. He didn’t seem to pick up on it or care if he did. One thing he needed I couldn’t pull off. The other thing I got done and cheaper than he had found it, like internet shopping is sooo difficult. I could train a monkey to do what I do, puh-leeze. He’s a 50 year old infant. More likely, just fucking lazy and why not, when you have this penitent  chick you can guilt and manipulate to do all the things you don’t want to do by gushing how important she is and how irreplaceable she is.

God, I am stupid and pathetic.

Now it’s a battle of wills.

He started talking about the appliance repair.

I changed the subject. He has taught me well.

I mentioned my situation with all the ruined food due to the broken fridge.

He completely blows me off, doesn’t even offer me a dollar to feed my kid.

Self absorbed doesn’t begin to cover it.

So now I am kicking myself for allowing myself to be manipulated. Other than ordering a part and fetching his beer, there was no need for me to be there. He had Kenny yesterday and did just fine. But Kenny wasn’t there today so suddenly I was needed. I don’t think it matters who it is, R just doesn’t want to be alone at the shop. Not to mention, he fed Kenny decent take out. Like actually food cooked at a restaurant, not just thawed and thrown on a grill. I almost never get that.

It makes my position on the food chain exactly where I thought it was.

I am slightly below the fucking mail man and that customer who wants everything done for free which he does because it’s “too much hassle” to try to charge him.

Damn it, what is wrong with me?

I tried to confide in my stepmonster. She said, “Do what YOU want to do.” No doubt she ran to tell my dad who will give me an endless rant on what a great guy R is and how I owe him and I need to do something to support my kid and blah blah blah…I heard the same with the Donor, who dad and his brethren thought had rainbows sprouting from  his keister.

Sometimes, I swear the ONLY person who is on my side is me. I keep getting knives in the back from everyone else. It shouldn’t be surprising but since I have changed so much, I live with the hope they have, as well. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Pathetic.

Tomorrow I think I am going to go passive aggressive and not answer the phone. Fuck him. Let his little moochie pooch be his bitch. All I learned today was that being around R makes me desperately want to drink because it is the ONLY way I can tolerate him in large doses without wanting to hang myself. I don’t wanna be passive aggressive since I loathe that sort of behavior…But having been completely and bluntly honest and getting nowhere, it seems like the only option left open if I don’t want to have my mood crash from stable to “oh god kill me now.” which is kinda how I feel right now after dealing with the self absorbed man.

No coincidences. He is toxic to me. Whether it is my fault or his fault or a combination…I think I need to do something to change things.

I just don’t know what, or how to avoid being manipulated other than to completely avoid him.

He makes me feel so lousy about myself, and for what? Because I don’t want to be his mini me?

People = pain.

Except my kid. She annoys me, but mostly, she makes me realize what I am still breathing for. Hope. Hope that there is more to life than stress and people who don’t give a damn about me other than what I can do to make their life easier.

I just have to figure out why…

Why am I so pathetic?

Suicide has been on my mind a lot lately. Don’t worry, it’s not something I’m considering. I’ve been researching information for a sermon I’ll be conducting in July while our minister is on sabbatical. Naturally, my sermon will be about mental health. Part of the research I’m doing is analyzing suicide rates of those with mood disorders. The numbers are sad, but not surprising.

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, 50% of those who have bipolar will attempt suicide at least once in their lives. 20% of those with bipolar disorder will successfully commit suicide. That’s one out of every five persons.

I’m one of the lucky ones. I have never attempted suicide. The three times that I was hospitalized were because I had suicidal thoughts and had detailed plans on how to accomplish the act. The first time occurred after chatting with an acquaitance and apparently said more than most people would share with a person they hardly know. I didn’t realize he was a psychiatrist. He immediately reacted, as he is required by law. He had some friends put me into a car and take me to a hospital where I was placed in the psych ward to protect me from myself.

The other two times when I wanted to end it all life felt hopeless. I kept asking myself “Is this as good as it gets?” I saw no reason to continue and then suddenly I would think of my daughter. She deserves a dad. I still felt scared so I had friends take me to the emergency rooms where I knew I’d be in a safer environment. Sometimes I think about others who have family members and still killed themselves. I would think the pain it would do to their families would come to mind. What is the point where that doesn’t matter anymore? I’m grateful that I never reached that point.

Just got a call from R. Now he wants me to take courses to repair appliances. To “expand the business”. Riiight. I could just feel the disappointment in his voice when I said it is not something I am interested in or have an aptitude for. Of course, he kept pushing me to “rise above it all” and “it’s an opportunity to make money”. Yeah, so is working the corner, doesn’t mean I am interested.

I flat out told him what he wants me to be and what I am are two different things. Then I added that if I had any interest or aptitude I’d be fixing my broken fridge right now and I wouldn’t have had to throw out $120 worth of food that had thawed. Of course, that went right over his head because ya know, it’s not his problem. Yeah, he cares so much about me and my kid.

He was dejected. And I feel rejected. Because I won’t do exactly what he wants me to do, then suddenly I am disposable. He kept going on about how I am supposed to be his intern or he would have gone with the one his daughter was pushing. Never mind I told him FOUR times to go with the reliable person who actually wanted to fix broken stuff. Hell, I told him this just last week, and he acts like it’s the first he’s hearing of it. I don’t know if he has early onset Alzheimer’s, selective hearing, or if the beer has truly pickled his brain so much he can’t recall anything that happened more than five minutes ago.

I am pissed off. I said, “I guess my goal in life is to disappoint people.”

Geesh, he really truly wants me to live his life and be a mini me.

I guess I won’t be going back to the shop and my car repairs will not happen any time soon. Oh well. If that’s the price for being out from under his oppressive thumb, so be it.

It’s sad because sometimes he shows such a kind facet to his “me,me,me” personality. I think somewhere in there there is a decent person who is capable of empathy and listening.

Unfortunately, it’s never going to see light of day by his own choice.

Which leaves me with this wide open space and no clue what to do with it.

I get what he is trying to do. Give me an opportunity to better myself and support my kid. That’s great and I am grateful he is thinking that way. But had he listened to me at all, he’d know this isn’t something I am good at. Sure, you can be schooled and trained, but you have to grasp the basics. I don’t. And messing with electricity when the fundamental principles evade you is stupid.

Plus, just seven days ago I flat out said, loosely quoting myself, “I think it’s time for me to move on, there’s barely enough business to keep you afloat and I can’t live like that. I want to do something with my creativity so I’m going to look into classes, my time as shop wench is coming to an end.”

HOW THE FUCK IS THAT NOT CRYSTAL FUCKING CLEAR?

I guess some people only hear what they want to hear. The proof is that I have told him also repeatedly that I am willing to answer his phone and order his parts and deal with his customers, but beyond that, it’s all him. He won’t let this “rise above it” thing go. It means more to him than it does me. I don’t have anything to rise above. He’s the one looking down on me. I am fine with who I am. There is always room for improvement but I don’t feel less of a person than him simply because I don’t have some sort of vocational training.

Wow. I can’t believe I deluded myself all this time thinking he had my best interests at heart but all along what it’s been about is he doesn’t want to associate with someone with no education or training or job. Guess that was a case of me believing what I needed to believe rather than face the backstabbing truth.

This man is nothing but pain for me. No matter how much warm fuzzy feeling I have for him at times, he is toxic. And the fact that I had to write this post to reassure myself since he made me feel so shitty is just proof.

It would be like me walking in and pressuring him to take a writing course simply because I enjoy writing. The parallel is lost on him. Hell, everything is lost on him. Basic English has no impact. He is acting like I lead him on and I didn’t. I have been honest from the word go. How is it my fault he won’t listen?

Yet here I am, feeling guilty for letting him down.

And I know if I don’t kowtow to what he wants, I am gone, so I’m just gonna make myself gone by my own accord. Fuck ‘em. Let Kenny the ever present mooch get the training. R doesn’t hold him to any standards yet me, he expects the sun moon and stars from. Is it faith in me or him believing what he wants?

I am capable of many things, maybe even great things. IF I could get my stupid misfiring brain on board. It has not been a good year for me thus far, so the brain issue is still in play. It may take awhile. It may never happen. But when I am cornered like this, it is absolutely never going to happen. I don’t know why he can’t figure that out. Has he met me???

Oh he has, he probably doesn’t remember it.

Fuck.

I really hate that my misanthropy is metastasizing. But it’s with cause.

The subject of coincidence is one with varying opinions, true believers, and those who are simply apathetic. I myself am somewhere in between on the topic. Because the whole personality disorder thing has been jammed down my throat, I am almost afraid to believe in anything that can’t be proven with hard science lest I be labeled “schizotypal” for “magical thinking”. My counselor says I am being ridiculous, but then, she wasn’t the one on the other side of that desk, being informed of what someone had written in her file giving her some incorrect label that will always be a notation in the permanent record.

For four days, I have been sick with some sort of chest cold. Or maybe it’s bronchitis or walking pneumonia. Neither here nor there. I can’t breathe, I keep horking up phlegm, my nose is a faucet, and the cough is excrutiating. It seems I caught this from my dear old dad, who is still suffering a week later. Anyway…

Four days I have not been to the shop, although two of them were weekend days. Point being, without the added stressors in my life of R and all his bullshit, I have actually NOT felt like death would be the better alternative. I am NOT freaking out with anxiety and panic. Oh, sure, I have stress, and I have been grouchy due to being sick and my kid insisting on company every bloody night…

But is it a coincidence that minus R’s crap and that damn shop that I am feeling calmer and better?

I mean, sure, it could be the Lamictal increase. But it rarely works that fast, especially when the doctor has you slowly going up in dose. Is it possible that much of my moodiness is because he puts so much pressure on me to not be moody?

I’ve been living his life for so long now, my life has gotten lost in the shuffle. I don’t live and breathe broken stuff. I don’t care if it’s how you make money, there has to be something else, some sort of balance. He wants me to be like him. That kind of pressure isn’t good on anyone, least of all someone with my plethora of issues.

I am not blaming him. I am blaming the grind of being there constantly, jumping through hoops. It’s been that way at every job I have ever had. I thought maybe this situation was different because for all intents and purposes I am there to keep him company and look for parts. Low demands, low stress. But I’ve been sucked into the vortex that is R and his personality and I was smothering…A break has actually helped me feel better.

Coincidence?

Perhaps. I doubt it though. Stressors can make a mood disorder worse. I kept wondering why the seasonal affect wasn’t lifting. Maybe the seasonal affect did lift. Maybe the “burning the candle at both ends” factor is in play. I am trying to atone for my past of mood swings that hurt people and in the process, I have done a disservice to myself.

Question is, where do I go from here?

Considering Kenny is now living at the shop and there constantly…

I think it’s time for me to renegotiate terms with R. The power is in my hands. He won’t be happy, he will whine and try to manipulate, but I think cutting back to three days a week will do me a world of good. I need to live my own life. Maybe enroll in some courses or do some volunteer work or something…that doesn’t revolve around him and his denial and his same old bullshit. For all his talk about how bad I was and I needed to change…He’s an absolute hypocrite because nothing about him has changed except now he’s the one being dominated in his relationship.

Hypocrisy makes me want to puke.

And people who manipulate me make me want to crack a shovel over their heads.

So the negativity that overwhelms me daily…seems to originate from all that is related to R. I still need the brownie points for car repair, plus getting out of the house is good for me. But considering that it is all devouring me and seemingly making my issues worse…

I definitely need to exercise my power and just tell him how it’s going to be. He can opt out if he wishes, it will not break my heart. Like a cat, I always land on my feet.

I just don’t believe it’s a coincidence. Call it magical thinking, gut feeling, sixth sense, superstition…I believe what I see and for four days without being smothered in all of the stress he brings and feeling better…It makes sense.

I guess I am just not strong enough to deal with such things at the moment. And it’s okay.

Though it baffles me how one can embrace functional alcoholism as healthy yet totally discount a mood disorder as being legitimate. I really need to learn how to deal with idiots like that.

And if therapy fails to teach me that kind of patience…There is always the shovel.

I had something light-hearted, and kind of funny I was going to post today, but in light of the tragic devastation in Oklahoma due to the mile wide tornado that spent over an hour on the ground, well, I had something different on my mind.

I’m THINKING OF ALL the people there and PRAYING FOR ALL the people there.  As a mother, I’m thinking about all the parents who lost their precious child(ren) today.  I cannot fathom the pain, sadness and anger they must feel.  As a wife, I ache for the wives who lost a husband and husbands who lost a wife.  As a daughter, I pray for those who lost a parent.  As a sister, a friend… I pray for all of them. Worried and thinking and praying.

But something that strikes me again, is this statistic of one in four people struggling with mental illness.  Well, there’s got to be several of my bipolar brothers and sisters there.  This terrible disaster would flip ANYONE’S life upside down and inside out. And as I am putting myself in their shoes, I can’t help but think about those people who are already struggling with their bipolar disorder or, who’s stability will be knocked out from underneath them.  Even things like, where will they get their medication to take tonight?  Seems maybe silly and unimportant to some, but I know it’s something I’d be so worried about if it were me.  I would be so messed up, I don’t need to add to it the whole situation of being off my meds.  Just sayin’.

This is a life changing event for so many people today and I just needed to stop, think and reflect. I needed to share my thoughts with you all.  Such a sad day and I’m truly praying for all the lives affected by this horrific day.  I pray for peace and for comfort for each and every single one of them.  God, I pray you will give them what they need during this time of desperate need.  Have mercy!

So Sad,

Mrs Bipolarity