I found this on the floor beside my husband’s side of the bed.
One year of symptom remission. He quit drinking, he quit smoking pot, he started managing money better and taking better care of his most major responsibilities and most importantly, himself. And last week I found a rolled up dollar bill beside his bed. I licked it because I’m a disgusting person and just so I could know that I wasn’t crazy and that he couldn’t try to say he was doing some kind of weird dollar bill origami and definitely not drugs.
It’s been a week of struggle. First we had to get through him admitting that he was abusing his prescription ADHD medication, then I spent several days trying to get him to admit that he had hidden the two remaining prescriptions he had left instead of “throwing them away” like he said. Once he came clean about that and flushed his medication in front of me, we moved on to the other things that he has been hiding from me (like smoking cigarettes again – which is both a money and health concern to me). He’s been let go from the best psychiatrist in our town for abusing his Ritalin and has not made an appointment with another doctor yet because he’s considering going off of his Lamictal (for bipolar) too. His next appointment with his therapist isn’t until the 8th at which point we’ve agreed that he needs to begin going once a week again.
I realize that over the last year, while Randy has been doing really great, he still has work to do. His primary tactic for wellness was to avoid making any and all bad decisions. The problem is that his tactic is shit and unrealistic. It’s okay for curbing negative behaviors but it does nothing for you by the time you’ve made a mistake that you didn’t plan for. No one plans to make mistakes. You don’t plan to go manic or hypomanic or have anxiety or even to be put on a medication that ends up triggering your inherent issues with substance abuse. You need to have more tools in your mental/emotional toolbox than simply “don’t fuck up”.
And what do I do? Who could possibly know what to do? I get so frustrated with him and tell him that I want a divorce and that I don’t want to live with these episodes for the rest of my life, that if this goes on it will be a bad example to set for our children. But he ups his therapy, he throws the abused medication away, he tries to make it right. Not only is he bipolar but he also struggles with introspective thinking and self-awareness. He’s not a terrible person but he is negligent as fuck and when I look back on 5 years of being with him, it looks like a war zone in my mind riddled with good times that helped take my mind off of the fact that I was living within a big fucking mess.
I think that sometimes people can try really hard and mean well and still not be able to get well enough to function properly in a relationship. I have no idea if my husband is one of those people and I have no idea how or when I will know if I think he is capable of making enough progress for this to work. It’s not that I’m not a patient person (I mean, I’m really not but that’s besides the point)… but rather that I know a person can only be screwed over so many times before they break and are no longer the same person. I feel like I’ve died and been reborn several times in this relationship and frankly it’s exhausting.
I can tell myself and others all day long that bipolar is an illness just like any other but the reality is that this isn’t anything like if he had cancer or diabetes. When my husband is unwell he acts like an irresponsible asshole. It’s an illness that can give you reason to completely mistrust your partner and question everything you think you know or expect. There’s no personality trait that can be mistaken for cancer. Physical symptoms are straightforward whereas mental health problems can make you question if your partner is sick or if they are just a bad partner.
basket full of meds 