Part of it, I think was that I came to realize the depth of suffering and the very hard lives of many people here. Especially the age 15-21 thread: I wanted to say these were OK years for me, but I was ashamed because they were so difficult for many others. And the thread was scary to me too, too. I don't know if you scared me (how?) or if I was scared of something in myself (what?). Maybe it was some kind of trigger. It just made me very uneasy. I felt out of place and I backed off. Didn’t read the whole thread.

But I kept on reading, every day. I felt detached but compelled. I think I knew I would come back but didn’t know how. Then I saw stricco’s funny e-mail responses and I knew I could come back through humor. And maybe I could write this, and send it.

A problem of mine is not trusting and I never talk about how much I need to be able to do so. It’s not trust in general, like, “Will he keep his word?” That can be an issue, but it’s not a problem unless it doesn’t happen. It’s this: trusting that someone cares for me, and keeps caring. I can hardly believe that it’s really possible. I don't think I understand or can feel caring, my own or that of others, very well. So through my life I’ve always tried to impress people with what I do, what I accomplish, thinking then they won’t notice what I really am. And I’ve been mostly successful at work and elsewhere. But it was never enough; I always needed more affirmation; I couldn’t look back; I couldn’t trust that it was real, that there was really a caring or loving connection between me and those others. It all mostly seemed, and probably was, superficial.

I’ve told you about my mania a few months ago, which rather suddenly turned into depression in early April. The pdoc and I are having a lot more trouble finding the right med cocktail than ever before. A difference in my life now is that I’m retired and don’t have as much opportunity to do that described in the previous paragraph.

So I’ve been mostly depressed with some better days, including a few days this week. But today the bottom dropped out again, and I was more miserable than ever, all the more so because I had been feeling better. So I cried and cried and cried.

My wife S and I have been married 36 years. She’s been through all this bp crap with me. She’s not the most patient person in the world, and she can be very critical, but she’s never criticized me for my bp symptoms, even though they have been extremely difficult for her to cope with at times, as you all know. Especially the manic symptoms, which I usually didn’t recognize because they rarely got in the way of the (outside) achievements and accomplishments I was aiming for. Oh, I don’t like thinking of the way I behaved!!! because I was so blind to it then. I would run to the pdoc when I felt depressed. The rest of the time I would say I felt fine. If I looked manic, he didn’t say. But what can you see in 10 minutes every month or three? I liked him… I was getting what I wanted… what’s not to like? Oh BTW I didn’t have any tdoc. Just the meds. And my wife. And, the past few years, a spiritual director.

During this time of depression I’ve thought a lot about all that S has put up with, and all she’s done for me apart from the chaos of my bp, how I’ve been self-absorbed and career-oriented, how I haven’t helped out that much, how much, for example, she’s made our home what it is and I’ve been lazy even on the traditional male fix-up projects so that she’s often done them. What a drag I must be. I do so little. I certainly do need her, but what does she need me for?

So I was saying something like that today through my tears, and I said I loved her, and she said me too, like she always does, and I said how can you love me when you do so much and I do so little, and she said she loves me not for what I do or don’t do but for who I am, and I think maybe for the first time, because she’s said it before, I believed it. I trusted her. I can do it, at least once. She cares for who I am, an “I” that I swear to God I want to find and enjoy being. My true self….

My true self, the one God created, not the false self I run around showing to everybody, including myself. The one that always just is. Be here now. A phrase I’ve been contemplating for many years. Hard to do (duh!). Doesn’t answer to the how-to question like most everything else in the world, the world in which I succeeded but which didn’t care for me. Or maybe, more likely, I didn’t care for it, I was just in the game for the recognition…. God, I hate to face up to this self. It seems fundamentally dishonest. But it’s how I got along. And it certainly wasn’t dishonorable, as the world goes. Maybe even it’s the rule.

My dad was messed up and he couldn’t give me the attention and love I needed from him as a child. When I was 16, we moved to another state and I had to remake my life. A big part of it was rejection of my father (I was ashamed of him) and subsituting the elders in a male-dominated, authoritarian church whom I could easily please by making myself into the model boy/young man. The big deal was to go on a church mission where I promptly showed bp behavior, though nobody, least of all me, recognized it as such. Hey, this was 1961-63! Midway some probably obnoxious manic behavior was interpreted by the mission president and others as a challenge to the line of authority and I got called on it. I was devastated: the way I had bought into the system, this was the absolute last thing I wanted to do. Everything depended on knowing my place, but also (privately) on working my way up, excelling and gaining recognition, and that was what I had known about consciously (if secretly). After I was confronted, I went into a depression but recovered soon enough and finished my mission. But then I knew I had a problem with authority and was able, in my mid-20s, to finally work it out in my mind and break with that particular church.

Writing this has brought me a thought. Maybe this is what scared me about your age 15-21 lives, messed up as many of them were. I was horrified, but I don’t think I’m a selfless person whose concern was mainly for you. My life was messed up too, but I covered it up with this conventionally “good” behavior. It got me a long ways, well into my 20s, anyhow. I was lost for awhile, but had some support, and always did well in school. I thought I would fit in on the opposite side of the desk at a university, but when I got there it was m/d x 5 years over the stress of classroom teaching. I had thought it would be the profession made for me. Graduate school had been so lovely. I resigned from the university. One reason I could is because I had S to carry me through. No more serious depressions for a while, but mania or at least hypomania, looking back. I don’t know how she did it. Loyalty runs in her family.

So I can see somewhat of a connection there to my being scared here a couple of weeks ago. Now I have been able to write this. I feel better, and better being here. Maybe this isn’t even the first time you’ve heard this sort of story. I’m writing it for my own sake, but posting it because I want to trust… to actually experience your caring and return it to you.

One of the things that's visible here is the way people support one another. It drew me here and made me want to participate, and I did. But after a few weeks, I got scared. I had been participating, but now I couldn't figure out what to say. I don't know how many posts I started and never sent. I wanted to respond, but couldn't; wanted to write about my own feelings and couldn't put the words together, except maybe very briefly and noncommitally.

Part of it, I think was that I came to realize the depth of suffering and the very hard lives of many people here. Especially the age 15-21 thread: I wanted to say these were OK years for me, but I was ashamed because they were so difficult for many others. And the thread was scary to me too, too. I don't know if you scared me (how?) or if I was scared of something in myself (what?). Maybe it was some kind of trigger. It just made me very uneasy. I felt out of place and I backed off. Didn’t read the whole thread.

But I kept on reading, every day. I felt detached but compelled. I think I knew I would come back but didn’t know how. Then I saw stricco’s funny e-mail responses and I knew I could come back through humor. And maybe I could write this, and send it.

A problem of mine is not trusting and I never talk about how much I need to be able to do so. It’s not trust in general, like, “Will he keep his word?” That can be an issue, but it’s not a problem unless it doesn’t happen. It’s this: trusting that someone cares for me, and keeps caring. I can hardly believe that it’s really possible. I don't think I understand or can feel caring, my own or that of others, very well. So through my life I’ve always tried to impress people with what I do, what I accomplish, thinking then they won’t notice what I really am. And I’ve been mostly successful at work and elsewhere. But it was never enough; I always needed more affirmation; I couldn’t look back; I couldn’t trust that it was real, that there was really a caring or loving connection between me and those others. It all mostly seemed, and probably was, superficial.

I’ve told you about my mania a few months ago, which rather suddenly turned into depression in early April. The pdoc and I are having a lot more trouble finding the right med cocktail than ever before. A difference in my life now is that I’m retired and don’t have as much opportunity to do that described in the previous paragraph.

So I’ve been mostly depressed with some better days, including a few days this week. But today the bottom dropped out again, and I was more miserable than ever, all the more so because I had been feeling better. So I cried and cried and cried.

My wife S and I have been married 36 years. She’s been through all this bp crap with me. She’s not the most patient person in the world, and she can be very critical, but she’s never criticized me for my bp symptoms, even though they have been extremely difficult for her to cope with at times, as you all know. Especially the manic symptoms, which I usually didn’t recognize because they rarely got in the way of the (outside) achievements and accomplishments I was aiming for. Oh, I don’t like thinking of the way I behaved!!! because I was so blind to it then. I would run to the pdoc when I felt depressed. The rest of the time I would say I felt fine. If I looked manic, he didn’t say. But what can you see in 10 minutes every month or three? I liked him… I was getting what I wanted… what’s not to like? Oh BTW I didn’t have any tdoc. Just the meds. And my wife. And, the past few years, a spiritual director.

During this time of depression I’ve thought a lot about all that S has put up with, and all she’s done for me apart from the chaos of my bp, how I’ve been self-absorbed and career-oriented, how I haven’t helped out that much, how much, for example, she’s made our home what it is and I’ve been lazy even on the traditional male fix-up projects so that she’s often done them. What a drag I must be. I do so little. I certainly do need her, but what does she need me for?

So I was saying something like that today through my tears, and I said I loved her, and she said me too, like she always does, and I said how can you love me when you do so much and I do so little, and she said she loves me not for what I do or don’t do but for who I am, and I think maybe for the first time, because she’s said it before, I believed it. I trusted her. I can do it, at least once. She cares for who I am, an “I” that I swear to God I want to find and enjoy being. My true self….

My true self, the one God created, not the false self I run around showing to everybody, including myself. The one that always just is. Be here now. A phrase I’ve been contemplating for many years. Hard to do (duh!). Doesn’t answer to the how-to question like most everything else in the world, the world in which I succeeded but which didn’t care for me. Or maybe, more likely, I didn’t care for it, I was just in the game for the recognition…. God, I hate to face up to this self. It seems fundamentally dishonest. But it’s how I got along. And it certainly wasn’t dishonorable, as the world goes. Maybe even it’s the rule.

My dad was messed up and he couldn’t give me the attention and love I needed from him as a child. When I was 16, we moved to another state and I had to remake my life. A big part of it was rejection of my father (I was ashamed of him) and subsituting the elders in a male-dominated, authoritarian church whom I could easily please by making myself into the model boy/young man. The big deal was to go on a church mission where I promptly showed bp behavior, though nobody, least of all me, recognized it as such. Hey, this was 1961-63! Midway some probably obnoxious manic behavior was interpreted by the mission president and others as a challenge to the line of authority and I got called on it. I was devastated: the way I had bought into the system, this was the absolute last thing I wanted to do. Everything depended on knowing my place, but also (privately) on working my way up, excelling and gaining recognition, and that was what I had known about consciously (if secretly). After I was confronted, I went into a depression but recovered soon enough and finished my mission. But then I knew I had a problem with authority and was able, in my mid-20s, to finally work it out in my mind and break with that particular church.

Writing this has brought me a thought. Maybe this is what scared me about your age 15-21 lives, messed up as many of them were. I was horrified, but I don’t think I’m a selfless person whose concern was mainly for you. My life was messed up too, but I covered it up with this conventionally “good” behavior. It got me a long ways, well into my 20s, anyhow. I was lost for awhile, but had some support, and always did well in school. I thought I would fit in on the opposite side of the desk at a university, but when I got there it was m/d x 5 years over the stress of classroom teaching. I had thought it would be the profession made for me. Graduate school had been so lovely. I resigned from the university. One reason I could is because I had S to carry me through. No more serious depressions for a while, but mania or at least hypomania, looking back. I don’t know how she did it. Loyalty runs in her family.

So I can see somewhat of a connection there to my being scared here a couple of weeks ago. Now I have been able to write this. I feel better, and better being here. Maybe this isn’t even the first time you’ve heard this sort of story. I’m writing it for my own sake, but posting it because I want to trust… to actually experience your caring and return it to you.

Written Jul 08, 2006

The storm howled outside, mirroring the chaos inside. A powerful gust jolted the lock, slamming the front door open. I could see my belongings strewn across the lawn. Clothing blown into the shrubbery. My favourite white cotton shirt, stirring restlessly in a pool of mud, as the wind slurred across surface. Was I really going out in this weather? I walked to the bathroom to grab "old faithful".... a box of anti-depressants. The shrew screamed again ... and again ..each time tearing into my soul ... like an alchemist witch with a dagger at the final newt. It seemed I didn't have much choice.

Was I REALLY going out in this weather? A gym pumped iron grip grabbed hold of my arm while her other fist slammed into my body. Repeatedly. Screaming .. Screaming ... Shoved to the door .... slung unceremoniously through like a cook heaves the morning's garbage. The door slammed. The lock clicked. Sheltering below an eave, I was alone. Forlorn. Abandoned, misunderstood ... mistreated.

Like a miracle, the storm abated instantly. The rain stopped, wind died. Like a sign from God. "You're better off out here". Shrubs stopped their maddened shaking. Puddles settled into calm ponds. Water poured down the gutters, sluicing away the detrius of man: cans, wrappers, pastic bottles .. leaving the street clean and new. I was feeling better already. I walked. Just walked and walked. Anything to get away from that place... away from her. Clouds scurried, and tentatively the stars came to life. I could see the warm glow from windows, where families ate together. The flickering of television crept out .. and music sometimes danced through the breeze.

The park .. I was close to the park. I knew this place from when I was a boy. Familiarity felt safe. The manicured lawns glistened with moisture, asphalt shone under lights. Flower gardens burst with blooms and the allure of fragrance tantalised my nostrils. This must be spring. In this place of nurtured abundance, the world seemed full and rich. Yet I felt so lost. Brushing the droplets from a painted seat, I leaned back and rested. Rested my heart ... soul .... mind.

Stress. I have to be careful. I knew how stress sends my system spiralling. Taking the pills from my pocket, I popped out two and swallowed them dry. Erch. There was a drinking fountain near here .. I'm sure. Quickly found, I washed the chemical taste from the back of my throat. Back to the seat. I sat quietly. The time stretched. How could I go back ... to THAT .... I couldn't. But something was stopping me from walking away.. to build something better. I was stuck.

Slowly, calmly, I took the pills from my pocket and stared at the blister pack. A fresh box... full. The foil twisted and creaked as I popped each tablet out. My hand filled. I dropped them in my shirt pocket, and continued. Job done.

I filled my mouth with half the pills and took a gulp of cold fresh water. A few stuck, so I gulped again. Foul taste. Filled my mouth again and took a larger gulp. Repeat and stir. Wash and spit to lose that foul aftertaste. Then quietly .. calmly .. walked back to the seat and sit. And wait. Disconnected. One hour. Two. Tongue thickened... muscles slackened... pulse dropped.

The fighter woke. "I am NOT going to die like this..NO WAY...I'll get to the hospital if it kills me". Not sure where the wry wit came from. I had to hurry. My stomach held enough junk to kill me. I knew it. I tried to move fast. I couldn't. The pills were beating me. Every block was getting harder .. Keep going, just keep going. I was slowing. Not even smart enough to knock on a door. How many blocks? Why did I walk so damn far? I'm fading .. I can feel it. Somehow .. I don't know how .. I made it. I kicked on the door until the bitch let me in. Terror showed in her eyes. She could see how close I was. "Don't you f-ing die on me!!"... she screamed repeatedly as she raced to the hospital. It wasn't out of care. Pure guilt. Pure self serving fear. My head was rolling. I couldn't feel much.

I just don't know for sure. Perhaps it is mostly in my own imagination.

My childhood wasn't what you'd call successful. I was bright enough but a wise-ass and a late bloomer to boot. All the tough kids would try to start trouble with me in school where, with my quicker wit, I would invariably make them look foolish. After school, however, my wit was no match for their fists.

This went on for years. I said I was bright- not wise.

And I was angry. I stayed angry until not that long ago.

I would like to say that I did well in school because it was the one place I could be successful- where I received positive feedback. This is the tale that I, as a teacher, tell my students. In truth, I succeeded at school because I had no choice. Failure was not an option. Hell, "B" stood for "beating" in my mother's home. I have since seemed to have lost those brain skills- due to age and medication (prescribed and recreational). Several times I've written something only to reread it and get that "WTF was I thinking?" feeling. Happens more and more... I'm sure you'll get the same feeling reading this.

In short, I am no longer 'bright.' But I am still a wise-ass; your garden variety nut-job.

Anyway, my success in school is proof that the fear of my mother outstripped the biology of my yet undiagnosed bipolar. Somehow I stayed focussed on the light, no matter how dark the days became.

I wasn't diagnosed until later in life- 36 or 38 years of age (I remember it began with a 3 and ended with a loop or two...memory fails me after that). My then fiance, M, insisted I see a doctor about my temper. Me, being the accomodating fellow I am, agreed. Several docs later I had the classification we've all come to know and mostly accept.

I'm happy about it. I don't hate the fact that I have brown eyes or a full head of thick brown hair so I refuse to hate the fact that I have bipolar. Hell- sometimes it really comes in handy- like when I have to paint an entire room in one afternoon and I just happen to be manic. I don't particularly care if anyone does have a problem with my diagnosis. In fact, eff anyone who can't take a joke. It's been my experience that normal people have just as much baggage as anyone with an official classification.

So I made it through high school and lettered in football (American football- the one with all the needless commercial breaks and actual scoring). I bring up the latter because the two may have gone hand-in-hand. Football gave me a safe place to be aggressive and it continued the lessons of discipline that began at home. Football made it possible to manage my bipolar without my knowing I had it. Of course, it may have delayed my diagnosis. But still- I was lucky.

Football also gave me a way to pay for college. But it couldn't do my schoolin' for me.

In fact, it was tricky to get through college undiagnosed, unmedicated and unscathed- and thats why I didn't... Scathed I was- in spades. It took me four years, three summer schools, one arrest, a couple of suspensions, and a few too many habits in vice to somehow achieve my diploma. Not a diploma in any practical fields mind you- majors in theater and english and minors in religion and education. Bipolar indeed.

With that background I naturally gravitated to special education. Which is, in my humble opinion, the finest profession for someone with MI. Eighteen years later, I am still here. That's not to say it was easy ... How I managed to hang on to my job is more a credit to the nature of that job than to my effort, I think. Somewhere along the way I learned to sprint- to go short distances while holding on to any shred of sanity. I can accomplish this in a profession with as few hours required at a time as mine. So I held onto that shred but I didn't manage to hold on to much else.

Well my computer...

When I joined BPS M had gone her own way and I had found another sucker I was very interested in. I have no desire to share the horror story that my life was ( any more than I already have)- I just knew I needed help- particularly if I wanted to keep this woman.

BPS was just what I needed. I knew I needed help but I really wasn't ready to do everything I had to. I wasn't that lightbulb quite yet- I could almost change myself. If it wasn't for the no nonsense advice of the members, mods and admins I know I wouldn't have made it.

I have since married that sucker, known here as messydesk. She is diagnosed as bipolar as well.

Yes, our life is bliss.

That is a load of shit and you all know it. Our fights are legendary- epic in proportion. They move with earthquake type intensity and yet blow over like a summer rain. Yet we know that bad weather looks worse through a window. Easy to anger at times, we are also easy to forgive and forget. After all, we must give what we hope to receive from one another. It does work for us so far, a mere six months in.

I'll update as needed.