more worms, please
Submitted by Medusa730 on Fri, 11/30/2007 - 11:41pmFour times this week my landline has rung; twice strangers called. Third call was from my stepdaughter letting me know she was looking forward to minor surgery the next day(I sent flowers the last time and I suppose she expected more--oops). The fourth call was from my sister, bless her heart, and she needed some information from me.
What the hell? Am I now so disconnected with the world around me that the eventuality of losing my voice from disuse is becoming a reality? Am I really that scary? Am I really that horrible a person? Is this going to last? Why don't people want to just talk to me anymore?
Okay, I'll admit that I haven't exactly picked up the phone and called what few friends I have just to check in, nor have I thought they might need cheering up or some basic tea and sympathy. I've also not considered that they all might be busy with their own lives, their holiday plans, etc., or that they may think of me now and then and write themselves a mental note to check in on me. Nope. What I think is that they all wish I'd disappear, that they hate me, that I'm too strange for them, and that there's no way in hell I'm getting any invites to any holiday parties--- ever.
Yeah, so that all sounds really ridiculously narcississtic, doesn't it? It's all about me, me, me. Pathetic, huh? I agree. That's the shitty thing about being a middle aged, unemployed, bipolar person----too much time on my hands. That combined with the fact that I'm in love with a man who's not my husband (no, I have NOT been physically unfaithful in this instance) and have been for the last 28 years, makes this phase of my life less bearable than it should be.
I should be at the point where it's all falling into place. The kids are almost grown and out of the house, the income level is at its highest ever for my husband, our health is as good as it's ever been, I'm finally getting to re-decorate the house as I like it, etc. etc. etc.. and all I can do is wonder what my life might have been like had I turned a different direction 28 years ago. Would I have become a bipolar person? Would we have been happy together? Would we have had kids? Would we have stayed together all this time? It's just mind-numbing sometimes to ponder the possibilities. It probably doesn't help that this other man and I still communicate. Granted, we're two states away from each other, but every time we talk, time and distance seems completely irrelevant.
I've always considered him my best friend, everything my husband is not -- he's a wonderful listener, always seems proud to hear from me, he's never been judgemental about me, he's very even tempered, posesses the amazing ability to be humble, enjoys making me laugh out loud (this, of course, makes my husband check to see if I've taken my meds for the day), has always been intuitively connected to me emotionally, and has unfortunately never revealed just how he feels, or felt, about me. Therein lies the rub, I suppose. His reluctance to divulge feelings caused him to date for 13 years the woman who finally became his wife.
The rollercoaster ride continues, though-- our sporadic connecting causes me to go damn near hypomanic and then hit those nasty depressing lows and I know some of it's responsible for my ever-shrinking circle of local friends, but I'm reluctant to let it go. As a matter of fact, put in metaphoric terms, he's the lifesaver to which I cling in stormy seas. He's the one I want to share the great times (yeah, these are rare) with--- sometimes he seems like my raison de etre. I recently told him I'd walk through fire to see him again (ok, I was drinking at the time) and at the same time I know the trouble we'd invite just being in the same place. A jolt runs through me just thinking about it. Dangerous move, that would be.
But I try to stay busy, try to maintain every little detail that's required of me in my current role as wife and mom, try not to think of what I want, try to do things for the other people who're important to me, try to focus outward instead of inward. But on those days when inward seems the only direction my mind takes, I come here and regurgitate all the boring little details that comprise my life, hoping that one of these days, well, you know......
old flames, new fires
I wish sometimes that I'd never found him again. I'd managed to go 13 years without any contact and then just got a wild hair and looked up the place he used to work in the internet white pages. Called; sure enough, "Can I page him for you?" some lady named Carol said. With a lump in my throat, I finally answered something that must have sounded affirmative, because before I knew it, I heard his voice saying, "This is Harry" and that lump in my throat dropped all the way into my nether regions and ignited--- everything I ever felt for him came roaring back and when I announced who I was, he sounded so happy to hear from me, I knew then that I was an idiot. The years just fell away, and we carried on a conversation that could have been minutes or eons in the making.
Our dialogue is always so comfortable, so natural, so completely real that one subject just flows into another and we make each other laugh about the most absurd things sometimes. My post-conversation bliss is absolutely tangible -- I have to be careful around my family, especially my husband, who's always suspicious of my elevated moods. Sometimes it can last for weeks afterwards, but always I find myself jonesing for more. I'll send emails, he'll call when he can, I'll call him when I'm having a bad day, we develop this communication from a once-a-year-for-a- birthday-thing into an as -often-as-I-can-possibly-manage-it kind of thing. I grow accustomed to being able to call him when I'm having a crappy day--instead of telling my husband who always wants to know if I've taken my meds instead of just offering support. He becomes my sounding board and before I know it, there are no other real friends in my life.
Five years have passed now and I've come to the realization that I'm dependant on him-- for emotional well-being, for a laugh, for his ability to listen, and I just can't do this to him anymore. He's got a life; he's got a wife and a job and lots of other friends and things to do and all I've got is..... a friendly voice on the phone, an occasionally hyperactive libido, and a habit. A habit that's at least as bad, if not worse, than heroin or cocaine; a habit that, if discovered by my family would destroy everything in its path like wildfire; a habit that I allowed myself to fall into like it was going to save my soul. Now are the days when, if I don't hear from him after I issue an invitation to call (hubby's out of town, y'know), I fall into this black hole of depression from which the only means of escape is a fix of Harry.
He's become my drug of choice and I never meant for this to happen. Cold turkey's gonna be the only way out of this and I'm not sure I'm strong enough. I can't even imagine my life without hearing his voice; just having him tell me that things in my life are going to get better seems to work that magic. He knows I'm bipolar and I may as well have told him I have an ingrown toenail--- he just accepts it and asks if I'm all right and we move on to the next subject. But now I'm egomaniacal enough to think that I might be screwing with his life and I want to let him off the hook; I want him to think this doesn't mean that much to me and he doesn't have to feel obligated but godDAMNIT this hurts! My heart clamps up when I think I'll never hear from him again and I break down and cry when he doesn't call or send emails and it's not going to get better EVER as long as I count on him for my only source of solace.
Somebody said, 'wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first', but I'll be damned if I seem able to wish that I'd never contacted him again. Instead I wish the rest of my life would alter so that I could BE with him again and of course, his would have to change a bit as well. Such is the nature of this obsession of mine-- to have started out as so much fun and developed into something this all-consuming is so typical of me, the bipolar me I mean. And whoever said ' it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all' was some kind of lobotomized freak.