Need Bipolar Advice...Feeling Very Alone

Hello all, this will be my first post here so I'll do my best...

I'm 27 (Will be 28 in Sept) and I've basically just begun to "wake up" to the truth about myself. I feel like for years I kind of denied the fact that I was manic depressive and just labeled myself as depressed because that's what the therapist I had when I was 21 diagnosed me as.

Fast forward to now and I've basically left an entire wake of destruction in my path.

I feel like I may not be as "textbook" as most of the other manic depressive stories that I've read so I'm not sure where that lands me exactly. I just really need to share my story and I'm feeling terribly alone in all of this. I feel crazy, I feel like I'm just some mentally damaged person that doesn't deserve anything.

I will cycle around the same times usually but sometimes it's a little off. I guess it would be considered hypomania rather than "full blown mania" but I do get feelings of needing to escape, like the outside world is just completely wrong, that I feel this huge sense of purpose to just "do" something. Basically, as a timeline, I can write it as this

2011- Fall - Winter depression has set in and by late spring/mid summer I leave my S.O. and two weeks later meet someone via the internet and drive 3.5 hours pretty much twice weekly to see them. At the time my S.O. was into drugs so I was pretty convinced that this was a great thing that I was doing by leaving them.

2012 - Winter - Still with the same person I left my S.O. for but this time a stressful situation at home causes me to leave and move to North Dakota (about 24 hours away from my home) with this person (I've known them a total of about 3 months at this point) I become terribly depressed and take out a loan in early spring which I basically spent most of it to get home and the rest of it just on useless things.

2012 - Spring comes and I contacted my S.O. again in what I feel like was basically the only window where I wasn't depressed or manic. We decide to reconcile and get back together.

From that point in 2012 to now I've cycled like that about 2 times in the same way (for a total of 3) where I would become depressed, leave, find someone else (usually someone terrible for me) and then cycle back.

This past time it was a little different because now we were engaged. I was stable for about a year or so at that point so I'm assuming he figured it was over (I did too because I just thought it was all out of depression and just the fact that we had a pretty rocky relationship) Well, we guessed wrong. There were a few times where I had thrown the ring back at him in basically a rage. I began to feel like I needed to plant things and have a garden and build these elaborate fishtanks and so I spent a lot of money on that during the summer of 2016. I felt as though he was stifling me and my creativity and I basically just filled our room up with plants (We were living at his parents) I then convinced myself that he didn't love me, that he was trying to control me and that he didn't care about me at all. Which caused me to, in November 2016, begin speaking to a coworker who had his own issues which was pretty much sex addiction himself but since I was so convinced my fiance didn't love me I was just blinded.

Again, I left, but this time I made my relationship with this other person public on social media. I felt like I found true love and that this was my fantasy relationship and that everything was just unicorns and rainbows. Until, I "wake up" again 5 months later going what the hell did I just do.

Now my ex-fiance and I are giving it one last shot as he says. I just feel so alone and like I'm a terrible, horrible, worthless human being. I feel like I just ruin everything. These issues didn't just leak into my personal life but my career too. I haven't been able to finish school because I keep stopping and starting. I've had so many jobs that I was convinced that this was "the career for me" and I was going to become the expert at whatever I was doing.

He's afraid to even tell his family that he's seeing me again because they're just going to shake their heads at him. We're going to counseling together but couples counseling. I have no health insurance of my own and I barely make enough money to get help. I don't know what I can do or who I can turn to.

I just want to feel like I'm not alone and I just want to feel like I can actually have a stable relationship with him. We've known each other for 12 years, he is the only person who has stood by me my whole life and has basically been watching me self-destruct.

Any and all help is appreciated. I just needed to vent as well...Thank you so much for listening.

That does sound like you've had a rough time. I hope the couples counselling has some positive outcomes for you. Your counsellor(s) may also be able to point out other treatment avenues you may not yet have considered.

I'm no expert in relationships - in fact my experience is zero on that regard - but you seem to have someone who likes you very much and has stood by you for a long time. And that is a very positive thing, that many people don't have.

Feeling rejected and unworthy is a very powerful driver for self defeating behavior.
Just ask me. Stories, stories and more stories of my own, leading to those feelings.
Some of rejection was genuinely hurtful and malicious I believe. I have also caused my share of my rejection. At times, I've been a jerk.
Along with rejection comes "BLAME"... I am crushed when I'm told that I'm the one with all the problems, implying that they are perfect and that relationships are not a two way street. It is all my fault.

Feeling rejected and alone is the crux of my current pain...
Just wanted to say you are not alone in feeling alone.
Now that is pretty weird isn't it.

You seem to have identified a few patterns...
- unable to stick to a plan - not finishing school.
- Unable to retain steady work.
- Unable to maintain steady relationships.
- prone to leaping in to big changes and then crashing.

In looking at my "Unhelpful" patterns, all I can do is take responsibility for that which is mine and work on it... and keep working on it, knowing there are going to be advances and set backs.

I also have to be realistic about "Hopes"... new jobs, new relationships, etc.
Disney is a fraud. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and The Lion King are fantasies. Life is seldom like that.

Sad eh? But knowing this keeps my feet on the ground.