It has nothing to do with bipolar, but playing with my kid just now, I got SLAMMED with this bitter epiphany. I’ve just been on auto pilot for so long, forcing myself to get over things I cannot change, rolling with the punches, trying not to be devastated by change…
And I don’t even know why it hit me in the middle of playing with Spook…
But I realized that my true descent into negativity and the dark side of life began in 1997, when my dad left my mom. About the same time, I ended my first marriage, partially in a fit of mania, but mostly because after 7 years, I realized I looked at my husband more as a little brother who needed looking after. He was a sweet guy, but…I married for the wrong reasons, even if my intention was good. (Who decides to get married just have medical and dental insurance? Oh, right, a young girl with a history of being rejected subjected to a litany of adults telling her not to worry about things like love and passion, but focus on a guy who’s a good provider and has benefits.)
My entire world as I knew, totally blown up, in the space of one single month. My family, fractured, never to be the same again.
I felt free on my own account.
I was even okay with my parents splitting up because all they ever did was fight and make each other miserable.
But everything changed, the home I grew up in was sold, my mom and sister hooked up with a rag tag crew of people I can’t even describe except to say “petri dish of suck”, and my sister married into it, spawned with it, and the whole fucked up mess is still in full force 16 years later. My dad went and set up house with his gf and their son. My sister had a kid.
I met who I thought was the love of my life and within a year and a half got thrown under a fast moving bus it took me the better part of a year and nearly losing a job over cos all I could do was run in back and bawl.
All in the space of two years.
Then I had the reaction to Nardil that nearly killed me.
Then my building burned down and I had like two days to find a new place to live and get moved.
And that was when I just descended into the pit of darkness. Like bobbing on an ocean full of nasty waves, every once in awhile my head would poke through the murky water…Only to be dragged back down again when the seasonal hit or the bipolar took a bad turn.
I spent six years alone, nursing my wounds, determined to keep people away and never hurt like I hurt over all of that.
Then I met someone I, in my gut, knew was “off”, but convinced myself- and allowed his hollow promises and oaths of absolute love and devotion, in. Had a child with him.
Only to be discarded two years later with a fucking phone call.
I’d say my life since 1997 has been a certifiable hell, and rather than taking or even having the time, to process any of it and come to terms with all the changes and my illness and becoming a mom, then waking up a single mom…
How can someone go through all of that and NOT come out negative and dark and harboring a lot of negative traits as shields to protect themselves?
The ONLY good to come of it all was finding a doctor who gave me the right diagnosis and right meds, getting to know myself and recognizing my flaws, and having my daughter.
Everything else was a bucket of suck and I just swept it under the rug, where it has festered and metastasized all this time. I preach about others dealing with their baggage…And yet, I’ve not dealt with mine. At least not that particular decade of suck. Life has just kept twisting and turning and I have kept hoping for the best and wanting to feel things I don’t and wanting to be happy for people when their happiness is like a six foot thorn in my paw…
It sounds petty.
But it’s also a huge breakthrough. Bittersweet, maybe. It brought a tear to my eye, remembering my family as it once was.Dysfunctional, and my parents could barely stand each other and we were broke and our stuff was crap and we lived in an armpit of redneck-iness…But it was MY family, MY petri dish, MY status quo. And it all crumbled so fast that I had no time to process, mourn, and reach acceptance. I just forced it. And the only person it hurt was me.
I was so worried about hurting others that I suppressed my own feelings and told myself to put on the big girl panties because I was 25 years old when my parents divorced, grow the fuck up. They’re happier without each other, accept it and suck it up.
Be that as it may…I lost a family. I have one faction, and a second faction,but that fucked up four person family that was mine norm for so long…That died and I didn’t give it a funeral or grieve or mourn. Losing my dysfunctional unhappy family affected me worse than having to admit and remedy my own marriage. It wasn’t that I cared less about my marriage because I really did try…But my safe space to run home to was gone. That crappy falling apart house with its sunken floors and crumbling ceiling tiles and bug problems and leaky bath tub buckling the floor…A shithole but my home. Even if I had moved out long ago, it was still my home, my safe place to return and lick my wounds when life beat me down.
Gone.
I never discussed it with my mom or my dad. My mom was too busy calling him names, he was too busy griping about how she’d spent all his money and put him into bankruptcy…My sister jumped into a teenage marriage and pregnancy…My significant other after I divorced was too busy with his own shit to even think of being there for me during my problems…
So I swallow the bitter pill of reality and there it has been lodged all this time, in my throat, choking me, gagging me, keeping me from moving on. It’s like I can’t ever be the person I used to be, the kooky one who wore bright colors and a Santa hat for Christmas and was bouncy and friendly even when not manic. My reality changed, so I had to, as well.
I was always a little dark, a little twisted. I shrieked with glee at age 12 when I saw Alice Cooper spearing dolls with a sword on stage. I read Fangoria magazine from age 7. I have always been a ghoul. But that ghoul had a shiny side that tarnished under the weight of painful reality, a shine that was rubbed away and buried.
I need to dig it up, I think.
Life isn’t perfect, but I have rolled with the punches. My kid is great. We don’t have much, but we have each other. I just need to figure out where to go from here.
I need to finally mourn the past that I lost.
And maybe if I kiss it goodnight, I can kiss a brand new future hello.
Too bad all this psychological stuff usually gets its ass kicked by the bipolar before I can figure it out. Because I really feel like this is a big deal for me. I now know when all the light in me went out, when I became completely consumed by the negativity.
Now I just have to figure out how to find a balance of who I was, who I have become, and who I could become.
I will call myself cautiously optimistic.
I know what could happen.
But nothing is etched in stone and maybe just maybe I am due for some slack from the cruel hand of fate. And from myself.
