so my boyfriend of a year and a half has bipolar disorder. We've broken up and fought many times over the past but everything always goes back to normal once he's done with that particular cycle. I know it sounds awful to go through but I am willing to and it is worth it to me. I'd never hold it against him because I've done my fair share of learning about the disorder and I know that he can't help it. I love him and I want to see him happy and I know I make him happy it's just when he gets moody it's always me. And I know that when he doesn't know what's wrong he's going to take it out on the person closest to him which is me, and I know I can't do anything about it, and that sucks. We've talked about his disorder before and he realized that I'm the only one who's there for him.

Now getting to what's going on right now, we hadn't fought in two months and everything was perfect and I knew that it was long overdue for him to go through a depressive, angry or manic cycle. Last Sunday I saw him and everything was fine, then that night when he was working he texted me and told me he was depressed, I know better than to ask him why or what's wrong so I just told him that if he needs me I'm here but if he needs his space I understand. He told me that he needed some space he just didn't want to have to say it, so we didn't talk because I wanted to respect that he needed space. On valentines day, that tuesday, I didn't want to waste my card so I drove the hour to see him and I put it on his doorstep and I left, as to not bother him. In the middle of the night he sent me a long text saying how he needs someone more mature and how I'm too negative and how he wants to break up. I'm neither of those things. He said he's on a path to self discovery as well. After we talked about that I asked if he got my card and he said yes and no, that he got it but he didn't read it, he hid it from himself in case he has a change of heart like he does other times with the things I give him when stuff like this happens.

We didn't talk all week and then today, Saturday, I don't know why but I had to say how I felt. So I sent him this long thing about how I felt and he was really nasty about it (which I was expecting). I just needed him to think about what he's doing. Also all week he has been tweeting all these sad song lyrics or he sounds happy. And in the past he's seemed happy and he would be out with his friends having a good time and not talking to me but that's expected and he'd always come back. The last time I told him how I felt and how his bipolar disorder was affecting me (because he knew he was bipolar he just had no idea what it meant) he got really angry at first but he called me later and told me that I was right and that he was sorry.

Everyone I've tried talking to about this just tells me I need to tell him to go on medication. He's tried it and doesn't like it and it's not my place to push him to do so. I know the real reasons he's upset are because he's a 20 year old boy who thinks his life is over because he hasn't started college yet, and I've been trying to help him to go to college, and I'm in no way trying to hold him back. I know he's just going through a cycle and he's not being himself right now and all of the other times he's always come back. It's just never lasted this long. I know it can't be the same every time but I just wanted to see some other opinions.

For now I just know I need to give him the space he needs and respect that and hopefully he'll come back sooner or later. I've been told I should leave him countless times by others but that's not what I want to do in the least bit.

Opinions? Advice?

Rightio, guys! Welcome to my world! It's great in here, albeit the landscapes may appear a little cerebral and neurotic sometimes. I lead the fine young life of an Irish student. Yes, student life is... well, chaotic. Effective organisation is always precluded by the necessities of student life (i.e. sleeping erratic hours, inconsistently meeting inconsistent deadlines, and an all-round simultaneous lack of planning and spontaneity). I am doing what I love (that's binge-reading on metaphysics and critical theory and writing highfalutin essays on it all), and even if it doesn't make me happy, that's okay, because I'm doing the right thing with my life right now. Clarity helps.

Happiness (whatever it is) is a thoroughly overused term these days. Why on earth should I be happy just because I have everything and my life is pretty darn good?! 'Erm... perhaps because you have everything and your life is pretty darn good...?' This is called circular reasoning, a logical fallacy. In fact, the entire pursuit of happiness in itself is both illogical and pointless. For a fact, nothing makes me happy. Ought I be stricken now by an avalanche of guilt? Not really. It's okay to feel whatever you feel and it is absolutely ridiculous to feel what someone else (or society, in fact) tells you to feel, because that's even more absurd that not feeling good, when life's good. In fact, the pursuit of happiness makes people depressed, because it's cheating logic and breaking down the faculties we rely on to make clear distinctions between things!

I like my life. I don't like my depression. I live life with depression. I do not live a depressed life. When I am really depressed I am not living my life, but this has nothing to do with my life and everything to do with my depression. It is important when I am very depressed to never wish my depression to end, because this would mean ending my life. And I like my life. It is much more likable than my depression. It only makes sense to say, then, that I like my life more than I can ever dislike my depression, because depression requires life in order to exist and wishing my life to end because it will end my depression is completely absurd, because it denies the origin of depression, which is not life, but absurdity. Yes, depression is absurd, but life is not and in order to affirm what is true and meaningful (i.e. the fact that depression is absurd) we must affirm life.

Of course, it may appear to be problematic when philosophers say that life is absurd and melancholia is a natural reaction to the absurdity of life. This may be true (and if it is it becomes difficult to distinguish depression from life), but even these philosophers find a way of affirming life, even if only in spite. For Camus, absurdity must be affirmed because our lucidity is the basis of all that we have. According to him, we must continue to push the boulder up the hill knowing it will fall back down, because acknowledging the pointlessness of this task liberates us to accept it. For Kierkegaard, it is defiance: rejection of help or escape which gives us strength to be our own and endure. For Nietzsche, life, suffering and all the tragedy in the world must be relished in order to rise above the adversity of slavery and become masters of ourselves through strength and creativity.

I have been wondering this for a while now. Ever since I was little, my Mom tried to fit in with her boy friend's life style. The guy could have been a raging alchoholic, who was a complete ass(most of them were) and she would stay with him, no matter what. Last year, I told my mom that my step brother had been sexually abusing me for a little over two years. When I told her, she at first seemed shocked and had called him in the room with my step dad. They kicked him out of the house for two days; during those two days, my mom didn't talk to me, yet alone speak to me. She began making me feel guilty for getting in trouble, and even tried bribing with my graduation dress for my 8th grade ceremony. I eventually gave in, and they moved him back in. I was forced to live with him for six months, until I ran away to my dad's house. The thing that I have had trouble coping with is how she could have just turned away from me. It hurts so much. I would have maybe understood if she was a dad, since they don't really go through the pregnancy and the pain mothers feel. I have just have had the hardest time grasping how my mom could have just left me like that. She told I could tell her anything. Why would she have done that? I'd like to assume she just has some mental illness that she had never told me about, but maybe she just didn't care what happened to me.

I am so thankful I found this site, I've been needing to get this out. This is a secret that both me and my father will take to our graves.
I never knew my real father until I was about 12 years old. I met him for the first time and he was a fairly attractive man. We grew a decent friendship and learned that I was just like him in many ways. As I got older I noticed he would get flirty with me, and instead of a normal father-like hug.. I would get a hug and a long kiss on the neck. I never minded though.

He was a truck driver, he went on 2 week trips at a time, then a week off. I was 18 years old when he invited me to go with him for a trip, and I agreed.. I was excited because I never got to travel much. His semi had bunk beds, but I would always lay in the bottom bed with him for a while after he parked for the night. On the 4th day I asked him to rub my back, so he did.. he then told me its been so long sinse he's felt a womans body like this that it was effecting him in a certain way, hearing him say that, did the same thing to me. All I could do was smile at him, and he kissed me passionately then kissed my neck and chest. I knew it was so, so wrong.. but it didn't feel that way, it felt so good and I didn't want him to stop. And he didn't.

What happened on that trip was my body's desires taking over, maybe if I had self control I could have stopped it from happening.. I fell into a deep depression after I returned home because of the shame and disgust I felt towards myself. I blamed my father, I went months without speaking to him. I wish I never even met him. But a few more months past and suddenly I felt lonely, I got ahold of my father again.. we started to talk, we apologized to eachother and everything was fine again.

It didn't take long till the memories of our trip started to creep back into my thoughts, but this time it didn't upset me, it made me want him again. I lusted for him, I needed to feel that love again.. So I went to stay him on his week off, we shared his bed. It was amazing just like the first time.. but afterwards I went back home and became angry and depressed again. When my period was 2 weeks late I took a pregnancy test, I was so scared to look.. but it was true, it was positive. When I told my father he asked me to abort, but I told him no.


My baby girl is now 2 1/2 months old. She is perfect, healthy and so beautiful. She has dad's bright blue eyes. Mama's nose, lips and chin, and our dark hair. I got so lucky that she looks mostly like me.. I sometimes wish the 3 of us could be one strange little happy family, but remembering the past, I know I will regret it because it seems to be an endless cycle of lust then hate. I tell people I was too drunk at a party to remember who I slept with. I'd rather be known as a drunk whore then an incesting freak. I know i'm not alone but I know the real world would never understand. My father has always told me he doesn't see me as his daughter, but as a beautiful young woman. And he's never been my dad.. he was a stranger I met when I was 12, and we became very close. I do know there is something called genetic sexual attraction syndrome... but I will just leave it at self diagnosed. He has only met my daughter once sinse she's been born, and I honestly hope he'll be more involved in her life, even if she'll only know him as grandpa.

Thanks for reading <3

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