Failed on Love Again or just another manic episode (I’m bipolar you know)
One Sunday, while still depressed over another love affair that had gone south, I came across a quote from Wolfgang Goethe: “If I love you, what does it matter to you?” I was struck by lightning realizing that being in love has nothing to do with the other person. It’s like saying “I love you, but it has nothing to do with you.” All these women I had fallen in love with over the years; All these crushes, lusts, and compulsions were about me and me alone! But what about everything I learned? She had believed those relationship people who said that couples get together to solve problems from their childhood. My spirituality was affected because I also believed that falling in love was actually two souls coming together to promote their eternal healing and rise closer to God. What about the angle of evolution? If we don’t have the instinct to unite some of us, we would surely become extinct, right? Still, those damn words of Goethe are so clear to me. If falling in love has nothing to do with her, then surely something must be wrong with me.
When I fall in love, I lose the limits of my ego. All I think about is being with her.
I don’t eat I lose interest in important things like my job, my bills, and my friends. I’m moving at a million miles a minute like a hyperactive kid… well, like a maniac. So I looked it up. Mania manifests as hyperactivity, grandiose behaviors, unreasonable assumptions, and sometimes high-risk behaviors. So that’s it, I’m manic! No wait! I also feel sadness, a kind of stressful depression. If her voice wasn’t on the phone, she’d rather not talk. I would die a thousand deaths waiting for my email to be answered. Did she read it? She Is she ignoring her? She Is she reading another man’s email? Where is my cell phone? It’s charged? She would call myself to make sure it worked! I doubted myself constantly. I promised and prayed. Argh! I couldn’t get up from the couch, but I sure could have jumped to the window when I heard something like the sound of his car door closing. Of course, all of the sounds were remarkably similar to the sound of his car door being slammed shut. Isn’t that depressing? I looked it up too and now I’m manic and depressed (and obviously confused).
So what triggers this love affair? Why her and not her (headless from left to right). Why now and not then? The stark and brutal clarity I got from Mr. Goethe’s simple question is that falling in love is the start of a completely selfish mood swing that manifests itself in behaviors described as mania, followed by (and often preceded) by depression. I also looked for that. The Diagnostic Psychiatric Manual (DSM IV) defines these alternating mood swings as Bipolar Disorder. That is all! I have a mood disorder!
Now, I was ready for a relationship when this one came up, so I can rationalize why I ignored the red flags. There was the old boyfriend who loved but didn’t love the him thing, the “slow down” thing, the “let’s be friends” thing, the “my totem animal is a turtle” thing. Flags? what flags? I did not care! Sure, I can be a friend. Yes, slow is good, sure, sure, I can do it slow. Hell, he would have done anything: he just wanted a girlfriend. I could see that she was also starting to fall in love with me. Well, she tried it herself, anyway. There was the come here go thing, the wonderful hug and kiss riverside cafes one day, but the next day I would feel like an autism therapist… here, turtle, turtle. I was confused. I sought the advice of my friends, my doctor, and the 7-11 employee with the bar on her tongue. In hindsight, I only heard advice that fit the requirements of my manic episode. I ignored the fact that she cut me off from the rest of her life, except to meet another friend at the nine hole spot or an after work meeting from a previous job. I ignored my friends’ warnings about always being available. I heard the “Come out and win!” instead of “What’s in it for me, anyway?”
Until Wolfgang shared those words with me, I had found refuge in what the relationship books said about being in love; that two people are brought together by a deep need to solve the problems of their childhood. Well, that seems pretty selfish now, doesn’t it? Still, I can’t give up a lifetime of finding excuses, reasons, and justifications for the emotional battles I’ve waged. I refuse to write off all that time I spent in therapy disengaging myself from my angry inner child again. Also, me and my inner little man finally have a deal.
Nor will I abandon my hard-won spirituality, although there is this nagging thought that where I thought I fell in love with this woman, all of these women, because our souls sought to heal, the mood disorder now tells me that I am. I suffer from a combination of insufficient levels of dopamine slowing down the action of my neurological synapses and restricting blood flow through my limbic system, causing whatever that sort of thing causes. Well, disorder or not, my God and my soul be still. Over the years and through trouble, I have found comfort in placing a good deal of responsibility on my soul. He’s the big shot and obviously he doesn’t tell me everything, so for self-preservation reasons I think I’ll keep him.
My behavior in this last case was particularly worrying. She wouldn’t allow herself to fall in love with me and I didn’t handle it that well. She showed. Why is emotional dissonance so powerfully disruptive? Every day I lost confidence in something else; the mailman, my golf swing, the sunrise. I would start spinning because the spam letter for twelve free CDs was misspelled with my name! I had days, even weeks, of misstep after misstep, as if the universe was trying to make a point. One day in particular he was having a terrible time. I was breaking bits, hitting my knee, selling a stock only to see it jump 30% two days later, couldn’t spell the value, and then I was alone on Valentine’s Day.
This was the most intense relationship I had ever been in. And I take as further evidence that what I learned was meant for me and had little to do with her. She was a catalyst for my journey, acting as a mirror or sounding board. Throughout this episode, I picked up one spiritual book after another; Celestine Visions; Soul Seat; The four Agreements; God, we have Harley. I found solace in the rocks: spiritual vibrations to soothe my soul. I had my palms read, my chart charted, and numerology of my numbers. I’d sit and listen to that drum CD as my visions took me swimming with a giant gecko lizard (my chosen animal totem at the time). Heesh! Is this love as the Lutherans taught me?
Like most people in the midst of the turmoil, he knew he would pull through. She once said that she could handle a relationship breakup. Rejection was easier to handle than intimacy because she had more experience with failure. Well, isn’t that nice to say about how we live and learn in the 21st century (although she actually said it in the late 20th century).
Having a mood disorder is a heavy label to put on someone (although it’s becoming more popular as drug companies ramp up the hype). It’s not as popular as codependency, but it’s coming, and with good reason. Just as we believed that the earth was the center of our universe, only to finally agree with Copernicus that we are not, and just as we believed that alcoholism was a moral dilemma caused by lack of willpower and moral turpitude , only to discover a genetic component, so we will find in the comfort of a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder the means (and medication) to accept ourselves a little more and get through another day, through one more rejection. Of course, a new relationship might be easier if I’m on Depekote and she’s on Lithobid, we could be pharmacologically compatible. Only our therapist would know for sure. I read that fish oil helps this condition. Omega 3. It’s supposed to help blood flow to the frontal lobe, it’s good for the skin, and I only have to eat 24 goldfish a day because, according to the book, it’s most potent when they’re still alive. I got the book at the airport from a bald young man in a robe.
Why is it a “disorder” anyway? Isn’t bipolar just another version of the individual? A wide variety of personality traits are needed to sustain our highly differentiated and complicated culture. Just because the teachers have to work harder and the parents get angrier and people like me end up at the sales or the carnival, why is that a disruption? I know people without signs who throw cigarette butts out of the car, don’t flush the toilet, order catalog cards in the library with Kleenex on their nose (I’ve got a cold, sorry) and even stick their finger out at me because they don’t like my changing behavior. lane. That’s normal?
Perhaps having a mood disorder is a product of evolution; proliferation and differentiation of the species. It’s totally natural for a segment of the population to have a seven-second attention span, alternating periods of mania (what mood was Newton in to create mechanistic physics when watching an apple fall?), and even a depression that hits us on vacation. busy. weekends: we seclude ourselves and free the roads for all that traffic. Heck, we probably even save lives! We are great street vendors, artists, musicians, comedians, politicians, writers and therapists. We are also heavy drinkers and drug addicts and are strong supporters of the tobacco and gambling industries, but that’s another story. I take some comfort in knowing that many important people were bipolar, including but not limited to Sir Isaac Newton (he redefined the role of the apple), Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Leo Tolstoy, and Earnest Hemmingway.
I’m recovering from this latest brush with the Turtle intact. One must expect recovery time, time, time, I guess, I guess, I guess. I’m fine. I haven’t bounced in anyone’s arms. I haven’t descended into the pits of casino games or chocolate covered almonds (well, maybe a pound or two). I’ve continued to meet women thanks to that canyahookmeup website, but these fine women don’t come close to the euphoric potential I demand for an episode. Maybe it’s okay to go slow and be friends first. I’m just not entirely convinced that I’ll get what I need this way – a part of me wants that euphoria.
Am I better for experiences? Yes. A long time ago I adopted the principle that the only expectation I have for anything I go through is to become a better person. Although I complain about love, moods, and the Goethe quote, this new reality suggests that I stop looking for “the one” and not rely on constant excitement and euphoria. The next time I meet a woman who blows my mind, I’d do well to remind myself that as pretty, bright, and promising as she may be, my attraction may be less to her and more to my combination disorder. of internal chemistry, instinctive need, a spiritual yearning, and some external trigger, probably a blue moon, a tidal wave, or some windy butterfly in some distant field. I’ll have to take it from there.