Bipolar Love

I get sappy this time of year.  I don't know if it is because of the lack of effin' sunlight or that the holidays ask you to focus on what's important.  

I know I don't say it enough but I have a great husband.  I don't want to paint a picture that everything is perfect or ever has been because that is not the case but he, over time, has become perfect for me.  I know that sounds cliche but it is pretty accurate.  I cannot see me without him in my life.  I can't look ahead and envision a future without him in it.   With my first husband, I could.  It was so easy for me to imagine going out to eat or shopping or pretty much any activity with some other faceless man.  

Beau has always been there for me when it mattered most.  After my near fatal surgery, when my Dad died, every depression, including the one that almost ended it all.  All the bad stuff.

It is hard to be in a relationship with a person with Bipolar.  I recognize that.  It takes a special kind of patience to handle the mood swings, erratic behavior, paranoia, impulsivity, rages and the non-stop crying.  Just when you get comfortable and everything seems to be going smoothly...BAM!

A moment of inattention turns into wondering.  Is he not talking to me because he is talking to someone else?  The paranoia fuels the wondering.  Who are you screwing?  Then the catastrophic thinking takes a life of it's own.  He has found someone else.  He is going to leave me and take our kids and some skanky whore is going to try to raise my kids.  Let me find out who she is.  The impulsivity provokes you to call his phone over and over until he answers because you are not about to be ignored and you have the immediate need to be heard.  You spend hours trying to crack the password to his email and even after he gives you the password you swear up and down there are multiple accounts that he is hiding.  By this time, the agitation owns you.  It is impossible to be anything but angry.  Forgetting to take out the trash is a direct result of your current fling, you asshole!  When you scream until you can't scream anymore, you scream some more.  Until you cry.  Then you cry uncontrollably for hours, days, weeks, months.  You cry until.  Until you wake up out of the depression that is almost sure to follow a mania of such magnitude.

That vicious circle was a big part of our life until the last few years.  Not all of the suspicion was baseless but the mood disorder certainly amplified my reaction to it all.  He stood by me despite it and I love him for that.

Disclaimer:  If any girl ever tries to touch my man I will turn her arms into floor lamps.