What's Your Story?

This is a thread to introduce yourself to the forum and share things you would like people to know about you. If you want replies please start a separate thread. Thanks.

Cracked

Hi, I am Cracked, I am 31 and BP1 with psychosis. If you post here I will be listening.

Cracked

Aloha! I'm fire and rain! My home is in Kona on Hawai'i island. I have the love of a beautiful man. I am the proud mother of two incredible boys! The ocean is our playground : ) My calling is to be a teacher of fifth graders. I teach in the medium of the Hawaiian language to revitalize our native language. Lived with cyclothymia since my early twenties. Didn't realize it til last summer! I am 44 years old! Have been on a mean quest to learn all I can about our disorder so I can manage it, live with it and do my best to harness the gifting and diminsh the curse!! baaaaahaaaaaa!!!

Hi-

My story is that with a very sad ending. I have been deeply involved and deeply in love with someone who suffers from Cyclothymia. We were great friends for about four years before we decided to take it to the next level. I educated myself as best I could through forums like this one and reading medical journals on the illness. Things in the beginning were absolutely great and we seemed destined for a life together.

During the past two months things started to change. It became a push-pull type relationship. Then the depression came and she pushed me even further. Since we don't actually live together, our dates and time together became less and less frequent. It got to the point where the last month we have spent one Saturday afternoon together. We do have lunch together on a regular basis and talk on the phone daily. She has two children so I took that into consideration and the depression. On several occasions I asked her if she felt that the relationship had run it's course to just tell me and that I would understand and we could move on. She repeatidly told me that she loved me and didn't want our relationship to end.

On Sunday, September 11th, yes I know what a day. I ended my relationship with her because I felt that I could not handle the relationship any longer. I told her that I realized how over extended she was with everything in her life and that I just could not add anymore stress to it. Her response was that she simply couldn't process the breakup at the time. It has broken my heart because I love her with all my heart but feel like at this point she is incapable of love and probably cannot be there on an emotional level. I may seem selfish for feeling this way, but I felt like I myself was losing my mind with having no other options.

The next few months are going to be especially difficult. Because of our professions we cross paths on a regular basis and sometimes talk daily on a professional level. There are going to be times that we will run into eachother during a business setting.

Despite my feelings and sincere love for her, I firmly believe that we cannot go back now and try at this relationship again. The pushing me away has devastated me more than anything I have ever experienced in my life. I don't even know if she even loves me at this point?

Hi Temevas1!
My heart aches for both of you, truly it does! Itʻs tragic that so many relationships canʻt survive the symptoms of our illness. The push and pull is so dang real, as hard as this may be to believe...itʻs out of our control...her control! Especially without medication... this is impossible for people who donʻt have our illness to wrap their minds around. Iʻve been there too many times to count. I donʻt blame you one bit, I promise! How can you NOT take it personally! Right?? But Iʻve been where your love has been all of my life, and I get her! Itʻs the man who DOESNʻT dig out, exasperated, frustrated, heartbroken that seems next to impossible to find! What man in his right mind will possibly stick around despite the push? Weʻll make YOU neurotic over time! Who will dare to be "the ONE"?" her valiant knight? ...omg! THAT is the prince we donʻt feel truly worthy of being sought after! I believe we have the lowest self-esteem possible. I even secretly believe we want the man who loves us to run away and leave us because it confirms the worst things we believe about ourselves and that is that we arenʻt good enough for you to begin with!! I can tell you that your ex-girlfriend suffers from wounds deep within that you couldnʻt even begin to understand. And that your love could help heal her wounds in the most beautiful ways just as she can heal yours! If sheʻs going down the rabbit hole into a depressed state, this is the worst time to expect her to be in her "happy place", you know? we hermit out. we push people away. we get fiercely independent and HATE to feel suffocated or have expectations placed upon us! Weʻre just fighting to lift our head up off of the pillow. And in your head youʻre thinking itʻs better to protect yourself now, get out before the devastation is worse later...And youʻre probably right because life with a cyclothymic is incredibly turbulent, emotionally exhausting... life is a flippinʻ rollercoaster! But if you are truly truly in love with her, accept her unconditionally, and you will stay with her through mental illness and in health, then show her that youʻre the one! and that youʻre going to be the one! I thank God that one man had the courage and the desire to do that for me. Just maybe youʻre meant to be "the one" for her, or not... only you know... and you either walk away from her forever, or you run into her arms right now!

Hello Fireandrain-

Your words have moved me deeply and believe me when I say that I would love nothing more than to hold her and tell her how much I love her and how she is the most amazing woman I have ever met. I have said that to her so many times before. It truly breaks my heart because of the great friendship and bond we developed over the past five years. It feels like a part of my life just died and I can never get that back.

I don't know that at this point she knows what love is and if she even loves me. If I were to run to her and she feels nothing for me, what happens then? Do I wait till next week or next month when all of the sudden she says, crap I really do love him? I am going to give this some time and let her stabilize and go from there.

Fireandrain, your kinds words are an example of how special, loving, caring and exceptional this illness makes you and the woman I love. She truly is the most amazing woman I have ever met and yet at times is unreachable. This is one of those times and quite frankly I am lost. I believe that if she truly loves me, once she comes out of this depression she will tell me and I will be willing to listen. If we are to attempt to move forward and beyond this there has to be some solid ground rules established where I am not left hanging or guessing. Time will tell....God Bless

Hi again Temevas 1,
I am such a sappy, hopeful romantic and your love story is heart-wrenching yet beautiful! I hear a hint of hope in your voice... at least you're willing to wait til she comes out of the rabbit hole! yay! I'm cheering for her cause it's like cheering for me, for all of us who are afflicted with this disorder! The ending is hopefully not a sad one... I can't believe that! Loving her puts your heart through the ringer and that's the crappy nature of our illness. It sucks! You've been in love with her for five years and that's not easy! But you have staying power, and that's golden! You see the wonderful ways that she's absolutely fabulous, captivating, and special, as well as the fiery, spooky, volatile ways that her moods and personality can send you running. If you've recently moved it to the next level, it's different for you because now that you're romantically involved, you're experiencing the pain of her cycling into a depressed state OUCH!! (it's par for the course for anyone who accepts being a life partner of someone with cyclothymia)... you can't change it. Understand it. Have compassion. You pretty much jumped into her nightmare and made it worse, to be perfectly honest, by breaking up with her... kind of like kicking her when she's down? especially when she's saying... I DO LOVE YOU... she's not well, right now. Since you're not her husband.. you can't help her at her lowest moments, and that must be a terribly helpless feeling. you gotta love her from afar (these are the times the tears flow endlessly at night and we fight to hold life together by a thread - then we paint on the makeup really heavy so people can't see our puffy eyes at work) But to know you'll be there when she comes out of it, that will speak VOLUMES TO HER... if you WANT to be the man for the rest of her life (and yours). and that's the soul searching you have to do... woah! it's a super difficult decision you have to make... time will tell, and I think you've made the right choice... you'll see how things go when she comes out of it... and you won't shut the door. that brings tears to my eyes. she'll be hoping and praying you won't. God bless you.

Dear Temevas 1,

I thought of one more thing ... best case scenario when the sun breaks through the rainclouds, and maybe she asks for another chance for you to risk loving her?? Going with her to see a psychologist or a psychiatrist will be the best thing you can do for your relationship. To learn how she "works," and for her to learn how to let you in and learn how to do life differently with you in it... a professional may very well help give you both the tools to help you succeed where you may fail left without awareness and understanding. Food for thought. All the best to you both.

Fireandrain-

Thank you for the wonderful advice. Today was especially difficult, as luck would have it we ran into each other in a professional setting. We exchanged the mere "good morning-how are you" and left it at that. There were other people present, so it was very simple and professional. I can tell you that it ripped my heart out as I walked away! I truly have no idea at this point if this woman feels anything in her heart for me anymore? I will tell you this, I will stand firm and give her some time to figure things out. I will not beat myself down and say that as long as it takes. At some point in the near future I will know whether it's time to move on or be the person she knows that I am. How sad it truly is to know that she pushed away the man who loves her and would have done anything humanly possible to make her happy and feel loved. God Bless you for reaching out to me. I can tell you this, it's people like yourself that makes life the great joy that it is.

Temevas 1,

Mahalo nui (thank you sooo much!) Reaching out to you has blesssed me, too! I've done much reflecting about my own past. I used to be unreachable, just like your love...such a runner, and I repetitively and dramatically pushed away the one man who dared to love me so many times. I've played back the memory of the time when hot angry tears streamed down his face as he held my shoulders telling me that he's the man who God has sent to love me for all time, he was convinced of that! But I was ripping his heart apart and he didn't know if I had any clue how deeply I was killing his spirit!!! Temevas, we are so self-absorbed and completely enthralled in our own mess, we can be incredibly oblivious to how we affect others... the whole cyclothymic community can beg to differ but they've been pretty silent, so far! Haha! I stopped running and shutting down when the right medication entered my brain. I stopped repeating my old patterns of behavior when I regularly met with a psychologist and a psychiatrist and started applying the tools I was learning. Striving to be well is truly possible. Believe me... seeing you yesterday... she put her best actress face on! She was dying inside, went into the bathroom and bawled her eyes out! You may think she's incapable of love, but her mind, once overtaken by depression, it's as if an ice cold blanket wraps around her and the deepest grief and sorrow overwhelms her soul... how does love pierce through that??? perhaps this picture will help you find a way rather than take it as deliberate rejection. I don't think she's taking medicine...not good, very not good. hope she's not anti meds. hope you can continue to guard your heart, be wise, and listen to that deep voice within you.