When I was in my early thirties, I suffered through a lot miscarriages. Another emotional time in my life. It was rough and it was sad. I found it really hard to cope because I felt so remote. No one I seemed to know had this problem. In fact, it seemed every time I went through a pregnancy loss, someone was getting pregnant and having healthy pregnancies. Of course I was happy for them, I also craved having someone to understand. Not because I wanted them to suffer too. I craved empathy, instead I felt like a martian. I craved someone who could assertain that I felt deflated and ashamed as a woman. I also wanted to understand why it was that this grief made me feel so confused and isolated. My fertility problems lasted for about five years, and even though I was graced with a beautiful son, this period will always be a dark one for me. Loss hurts, no matter how hard, and dealing with the grief during this time was just as painful. It was by finding infertility support groups on line that really lessened the blow for me. I realized how much being able to rely on some sort of system where people can understand you makes such a huge benefit to any sort of recovery. I also just wanted to feel normal again. I wanted to be like everybody else. The everybody else who I thought never had to hurt.
Needing support today in my new recovery is no different as I deal with my alcoholism, biploar disease, mental disorders, divorce, moterhood, job hunting, middle age, and just being a woman in general. Friendships and relationships are vital to helping us feel connected and most importantly human. Most especially with the people who get you! One of the biggest challenges for my friends during my recent mania episode is how helpless and scared they were for me, they had no idea how to comprehend my behavior nor could they relate to how I was behaving. I doubt they even knew what bipolar symptoms or pyshcosis mania was. They just new I had lost it. I think that is why I chose to get rid of everyone out of my life. My parnoia and fears and their tenacious accusations told me I did not need them. Which is why I talk so openenly about this disease and especially sharing with you about the mania itself. I am hoping this information might encourage others to understand, for the most part, any person in a mania phase of Bipolar is not going to easily just follow your rationality and logic that you hope them too. And for this period of time, no one could get through to me and honestly, not knowing my diagnosis yet, they really had no idea how. And I did not care, because in my mind, I needed no one. This was a very dangerous place for me to be in. Frankly, it was exactly what I did need, people, people to just really love me and help me while I was really sick. I think losing a lot of my support these last few months, actually made things and lot worse for me. I believe this makes it worse for a lot of people who suffer from bipolar, depression, and other mental illnesses. It appears they want to be left alone, and really what they need is support and help. It i not easy to be both. Like I have said before, I could have really gotten hurt or hurt someone. It was being around people who could understand and assist me was what saved my life, again.
One of the reasons it did not take long to adjust to the confines of a treatment center when I went a year ago, and again later in AA, was that I finally felt connected. I made some real friends, friends who for the most part, really got me. And this was important. Extremly imporant to my feeling human. Addiction has such a stigma to it. And lot of my diseases and mental disorders do. I am multi diagnosed. It was at these places I finally felt fully accepted. This facet has impacted me greatly still. I had never felt any sort of connection like that before or since. And the result has been both positive and heart wrenching for me too. Just like with my maina isolation, my alcoholism took me to the same island, where all I did was drink and drink alone. I cut people from my life then to, atleast from the real me. I did not socialize much anymore. I was too ashamed too. My drinking was an embarrassment, and yet I could not give it up. It controlled me, my thoughts, and everything I did. And what it did was cut me off from the real world and my real dreams. Going to treatment brought me back to the excitment and stimulation that socliazing brings. And I was exhilarated even more by the people I met. It did not matter that our consorting often revolved around sharing some of the most ugliest times of my life. People got me. And I got them. I had never before felt so open and free to share who I really was. And these people, for the most part, were just like me. And I loved them all, each of them for who they were, no matter what their past looked like. Because we knew, we had a lot in common. And for the first time in a long time, I had bona fide friends.
At treatment and in the rooms with these friends, I could be myself. All of me, the parts I never wanted anyone to see before. There was no having to hide here. I did not have to put on my pretty little smile and pretend all was well in my life. And maybe that is a major piece of the reason I fell in love with someone during my stay at rehab, and fell in love fast and hard. I am sure that is why a lot of people do. It happens all the time. We finally find someone who sees the real us, we don't have to put up an act, and they still find us attractive. Of course, this can also play a negative role too. Two people dealing with the same big problems at the exact same time, just confirms, there is work to do first before any real lasting relationships can come to fruition. Yet, I fell anyway. Not just with him, with the feeling. I fell deeply for that feeling. That incredible feeling that for the first time ever, I did not have to explain or hide anything! I was who I was and I did not need an excuse. I was raw and honest and concealed nothing. I had really fit in and finally was the memeber of this club. This club where I had opened up inside like I never had before.
And that's why it all hurts so much now. I feel like my vunerability left me stranded. It happened with a lot of my relationships with friends in the program. Since alcoholism and mental illnesses typically have an agenda of their own, people can be on one day, and off the next. You might never know. And I got hurt, A LOT. People would relapse and then they left from my life. Or sometimes they would just leave the program and you'd never hear from them again. Other times their lives somewhat improved, and they no longer needed you. Or worse yet, I went cray, and people wanted nothing more to do with me. The other downside to the membership problems of this club, you just never knew one day from the next who would stick around and who would leave, because, that is what the disease wants, it wants you alone and then it wants you dead. And that reality sucks. The friends who were making me finally feel like I had fit in, all had up and left me all alone again. And this my friends, is the dowside to this club. For all the intended purpose to fit in, we were all just like everyone else, here one day or gone the next.
And I am just like every body else in this world. I want to intergrate myself into society and have people understand me. I want to be myself and not try to hide who I am. I want to be loved and loved for just being me. I also don't want to be known only as that woman who can't drink anymore, who carries around the stigma of having a few mental illnesses & who went nuts for awhile from a mental breakdown. I am more than that. I am an incredibly, talented, and amazing woman, mom, and friend. I am truly a member you want and need in any club. And hopefully one day I can meet a man like me, who is probably also not normal like me. I also love finding people who are alcoholics, suffered trauma, and have mental illnesses just like I do, because they can relate to me, I can relate to them, and we can help eachother through to the other side. I want the perfect mix of it all. I want to be me and have people care about me even with all the components and parts that make me me. Basically, getting better helps so much more if you have people in your boat, knowing how to keep the ship alfoat as crew.
I wonder now too how I will meet people and keep people in my life that get me today and who won't leave me. I wonder will I ever be able to meet a man who will understand what it means to love a woman like me? Someone who doesn't mind a woman who's a little off her rocker yet strong as an ox. Or Friends who can see past this mixed up version of myself and at the same time, might even be able to relate? I am looking for that legitimate recipe. I want it in all my relationships. Not only do I want to be accepted for the person I am, I want to find other people too, for who all intended purposes are like me and just like everybody else. Trying to fit in where you can be uniquely yourself.