The abyss of loneliness

courtesy of http://www.someecards.com/



This weekend, it became evidently clear again that I am alone and it sucks.

When receiving some bad family news on Friday over champagne, #londonsis had her fiance and #torontosis had her husband and baby, to hold on too, as we absorbed the information that we were being told.  I had no one.  No one to get home and cry to on the sofa, to cuddle up to in their arms just for some comfort, to hold their hand so that i didn't feel like I was going to fall off the deep end of the ocean into an abyss of fear, sadness and depression.  All of my emotions were mine alone, to process and manage the feelings on my own.  It was horrible.  It was even more horrible because I have really secluded myself from any friends that I had, and don't feel that I'm able to reach out to them now when I am back in crisis.

I so rarely feel like being single is awful.  I do single well.  I am confident in doing things on my own and I am usually perfectly OK with it.  Except that I know that this life is meant to be shared with another human being and that I do not want to be on my own forever.  On Friday and throughout the weekend, I was reminded that it is truly awful going through this life on one's own and this is not the life that I want to lead. 

But I am a lot to take on.  I know that the hope of finding a partner is even smaller given my mental illness.  Before I was sick and diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, I was just the girl with Migraines that battles chronic depression, but was still fun when needed.  Now I am the girl who is crazy, needs 10 pills a day to keep some form of sanity and has gained another 25 pounds because of the drugs that I am taking.  What man/boy wants to take that on? Not very many.

I rarely find men attractive anymore.  I think that it is a defence mechanism.  Don't worry, if you don't find anyone attractive, you will never put yourself out there, you will never get rejected, you will never have to face the fact that you are, as you believed, a lot to take on, too much for most people.  When I do find someone attractive, I am so eager for them to like me that I am destine to be over eager on all angles.  I am a relationship mess.  Sabotaging my own happiness, before it has a second to establish itself.

So here I am.  Me.  Myself.  I.  Alone. I wish I could change it, but apparently this is not going to be easy.  I sit at my desk, tears running down my cheeks, thinking that I may be stuck in this abyss of loneliness forever.

Law & Order:Criminal Intent deals with Mental Health

I have always found that there is one TV show that deals with Mental Health relatively well and that is Law & Order: Criminal Intent, particularly the character Detective Robert Goren played by Vincent d'Onofrio.  Now it is widely known that I have a 'made for tv' crush on that particular character, but what has really caught my attention recently is his time spent in therapy.   In the show they portray his mother as a schizophrenic and the Detective deals with depression/anger issues and the fears of the  being alone/not able to manage a relationship.

Today I was watching a taped episode and at the end of the hour, Detective Goren meets with his therapist.  The clip above is perfect and I feel like I could be in his chair, asking the same questions of my therapist "Am I capable of a relationship?? A family?"  The therapist's response is classic therapy "Well, we could work towards that goal."  I'm sorry, but not only is that an infuriating response, but WHAT THE FUCK DOES IT MEAN????  How does that help?  It does not advance the therapy session at all.  It is one of those moments in any type of therapist, patient relationships where you just want to scream at the top of your lungs.  I am glad I was able to capture it, even badly with my iPhone.  I am also glad that a tv show is demonstrating some of the frustrations of mental health in an honest way.

Sex, Dating and Relationships at a support group

Last Thursday I spent 2 hours in a group therapy session with 9 other woman, all of us have some level of crazy - bipolar, severe depression, anxiety - of course we don't call it crazy, we say "living with Bipolar Disorder/depression/social anxiety etc".  Anyway every week tends to  have its own flavour.  Some weeks everyone just talks about what is going on in their own lives, other days we help someone who needs to be more social and then all of a sudden we are all admitting that we are hermits.  Last week we talked about sex, dating and relationships.  Now before I go any further, I should let you know that many of these women I see every week and have been going to for months, some of them for years, so we tend to know each other well.

So how did the topic of "Sex, Dating and Relationships" come up?  It was all really very innocent.  One of the woman asked if anyone would be offended if we talked about sex and the flood gates opened.  She in particular wanted to talk about the fact that she had no sex drive.  The drugs, her mood and the weather had sucked all thoughts of sex out of her.  So many people agreed and sympathized.  The discussion lead to the fact that drugs have taken so much from so many of us and feeling attractive (the weight gain of some of the drugs being only one part of feeling so unattractive even to ourselves) and having a sex drive is just one more thing.  The next woman to speak, spoke about being manic and not getting enough sex.  We all laughed at the fact that mental illness certainly led so many of us on different paths and polar opposites of the spectrum.

When it came my time to speak, I was amazed at how open I was with this group of woman about the pain of being lonely, and the challenges that mental illness brings to bear on being social, dating and relationships.  I have avoided socializing for months (ok, maybe it is now over a year, close to two), let alone dating.  I have a couple of male friends who I see occasionally, but we do not date.  I am just too closed emotionally to date.  The idea is slightly terrifying.  I fear the rejection might throw me over an edge that I don`t wish to go over.  Closed emotionally might not be the best description, but emotionally fragile might be better.  This of course does nothing for the feelings of being lonely.  I also believe that the longer that I am anti-social, the lonelier I get, the scarier it becomes to be social, the more anti-social I become, the lonelier I get......and the circle goes on and on and grows bigger and bigger.

I was not surprised to hear that I was not the only one.  So many of the women in the group were in the same boat.  I was at this point crying.  I had opened a part of my emotional self to these women that was very sensitive and very raw.  It is not easy to admit that you are very lonely and that you are in this evil cycle.

I also admitted that part of the challenge was that I had not found anyone attractive in ages.  It has been a very long time that I have had butterflies in my stomach when a boy/man is around that I like.  I wonder if my mind has done this on purpose so that I will not be distracted from getting better?  I have in recent months found some people attractive (previous posts have expressed this - baby fluttering butterflies) and I think that this might be a good sign that I am ready to begin to be more social, still beyond terrified though, so who knows.

What was amazing is that, when I admitted this, so many of the women then started to prop me up.  They helped to build my self esteem.  I was told that I was worthy of love.  I was a wonderful person.  That I was supporting this group of women every Thursday afternoon, no matter how sick I was, rather than them supporting me.  That at some point, someone fabulous would notice this.  Who knew that I would find a number of cheerleaders in this group of crazy ladies???

By the end of the session we had covered the difficulties of loneliness, drugs and sex drive, bipolar mania and sex, dating and mental health, mental health and discloser while dating, casual relationships and their impact on our mental health, long term relationships and mental health, "am I worthy of love, even with our mental illnesses??", letting go of toxic relationships.......

Who knew that this support group would end up being so focused on Sex, Dating and Relationships, but it was needed.  I needed the support of the group to know that I was not alone.  I also needed to know that it was OK to put myself out there and try.  Everyone faces rejection and I would be OK on the other side, I just had to go for it.  Easier said than done, I say.  Maybe after this Thursday, I will have a little more courage and a little more cheerleading to push me to go and find someone who makes butterflies fly in my stomach...

Bipolar Disorder Monster taking one more thing - Babies

As anyone who has read my blog, follows me on Twitter, knows me in person or knows anyone of my family or friends, knows that I have an instant connection to children.  I have since I was a child myself.  The 4 yr old that would "babysit" the babies in the room, the one girl/woman that was always asking to hold the babies when they were/are around and someone who has always wanted more than anything to be a mother.  One of my closest friends RT used to call me MIT "Mother in Training" in highschool, a clear indication of what was to come for me, or so I thought.

So here I am.  34 yrs old.  Single.  Sick.  Diagnosed bipolar aka crazy.  Unemployed.  All forcing a re-evaluation on life.  One think that this year has taught me is that there is likely no way that I will be able to have a child on my own.  I always said that if I was 35 and alone, I would have a baby on my own.  It is not, and has never been the ideal option, but it was a viable option.  I was a responsible and good person who could have managed a child on my own.  I have friends who have had babies on their own.  It was not easy, but they have managed and are so thankful for the experience.  They did not plan their lives in the hopes of doing it on their own, but they come to an age where they had no one in their lives and realized it was a now or never time for having a baby.  Something they always wanted, much like myself. 

I believe and think that I am know not able to handle the responsibility and the pressure of a child on my own while managing a bipolar disorder.  The stress and responsibility will likely be too much for me to handle on my own while managing my disease and not doing harm to myself and others.

I have also read and learnt that many mental health illnesses including bipolar disorder are passed down from generation to generation.  I wonder if past generations of my family had experience with mental illness?  I know that there has been some talk of relitves being "crazy" or having addictions, both signs of mental health issues.  Do I want to pass down this disease to another generation??  Is it fair to do that??  Would I want anyone to go through this??  I know that some of my friends who are dealing with bipolar disorder have decided that they are not having children because of the fact that they risk passing it down to the next generation.  What to do?  What to do?

I realize that this declaration of my not being able to have a child on my own means that I will only have to find someone stable enough to want to have a child with me.  Well it sounds easy enough, but who wants to be with the person who is certifably crazy, unemployed, fat, did I mention crazy???  And that that person will want to put at risk their offspring with my genetic pool of Russian Roulette for mental illness.  I had a hard enough time finding men who wanted to date me when i wasn't crazy.

Maybe this is the universes way of telling me that the one thing that I want more than anything is something that I just won't be good at, or can't handle - being a mother.   Goodness knows that apparently if you are a teenager you can have a baby, but not if you are me.  Not if you have played by the rules, been safe, waited until you tried to find someone so that you could make a stable family, with a mother and a father who are good role models.  Nope, I had to get sick and everything had to fall apart.  Yet another thing that the bipolar disorder monster has robbed me off.  This stupid, infuriating disease has taken so much and now it looks like it is taking the one thing that I want more than anything, a child.