Its Thursday. He’s been on my mind a lot. I don’t really know why.
Every time I see this commercial about bipolar disorder, I scream inside. It states that bipolar is a lifelong and disruptive. Disruptive? Disruptive. The understatement of a lifetime. I lost a man I truly loved to madness. The worst part: I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t keep him. I couldn’t stay to watch the destruction. I couldn’t stand it; I couldn’t stand him. To say this is disruptive. Bipolars don’t understand, can’t see, the havoc they reek. Years later and I still grieve. He was my friend, a great lover. A madman.
He understood me and didn’t judge me. He knew my faults and didn’t care. And then, he went away to a place I couldn’t reach; couldn’t go. How do you get over that? HOW?! Everything I tried, failed. Medication, failing, attempted committing him, therapy, patience, denial. I had nothing left.
He liked being mad. No, loved it and chose it over me. I don’t know how to explain that, but he did choose. He felt the world misunderstood his affliction and used medication to cover it up. He has no idea how much it devastated me. I still am. And I don’t want to be anymore.
At first, he couldn’t cope with small things. Then a business failed, he withdrew, hid. He wanted to pursue his dream. He totaled a car in a manic fit. He wouldn’t work. He chose to have our utilities cut off. He hit my truck 2x when he was pissed at me. Had screaming rage fits. He left for another place with no job and wanted me to join the mad trip. I wouldn’t—I only saw bad things there. He wouldn’t work there. He charged up all of our credit cards. He wrecked another truck. We bought another one. He raged at the insurance companies. He raged at an old lady who had too many items in her cart at the grocery. He lied to me. Everything was everyone else’s fault. Never his own. Never. It just got worse. He stepped into a raging flood, literally and was swept downstream in the middle of the night. He was fired from the same company as me.
I feared for his life and began to fear for my own. The future. Maybe I lacked faith. I did. But I couldn’t live in this hurricane anymore. He liked it. I didn’t—needed safer place to be.
I think part of me still believes he duped me. That this was some horrible scheme to draw me in. But it wasn’t. It just happened. All of it. I don’t know how we both got through it…deciding to leave him was the hardest thing I ever had to do. Its not what I wanted but what I thought we both needed. He wanted the maelstrom. I didn’t.
I grieve him, miss him, hate him, love him and scarred by him. Disruptive?
