I am married and I love my husband. But this is a story about when I was young & single & pretty & cute & not confident & naive & ignorant & stupid.
In my early adult years: I was totally in love with this boy in college. He was my moon & stars. But he could care less about me. He treated me like a joke and I in return treated him back harshly. Then, when we graduated, he wanted nothing to do with me. I only saw him once or twice. Let's just say that I was unstable with my bipolar at the time.
After that debacle I put myself through, I was chased after in the club by this guy... He was 6'5" & 305 lbs! I looked up. I was to tiny back then. He was a sweetheart. But, I had called him one evening to ask when he was coming to pick me up & he was having a party with laughter & cajoling! I had just about finished my Master's Degree and I was sick of it. So two can play that game.
At the next "party" I attended, I met a guy. Now this one was handsome, personable, & so I thought, more my "speed". Something told me NOT to respond to this guy, not to answer his phone calls, but I suppressed it and I relished in the lifestyle!
This was another 4 year debacle. I was young, pretty, cute, smart, outgoing, had a lot going for myself if I concentrated on it, but I always felt something missing, like a relationship. But I did not have a clue how to have one. My bipolar often kicked in, while more stable than before, the haunts of my sordid past would arise. It wasn't the past failed relationships, it was the "free expression caught up whirl" - the "merry go-round" I got myself into and I didn't know how to get out. That hurt me worse than a bad relationship. Later, I found out, that a part of bipolar is inconsistent relationships with degenerate sexual partners--a part of mania--that's another story.
Anyhow, I shall call this person "Bart": hindsight is always 20/20. But somethings I only found out until much later. Such as, I found out he had beaten his previous girlfriend within an inch of her life. Bart had always been verbally abusive and a drunkard, but I was not fearful of him physically abusing me. That is not saying he would have not had done that to me, but that is one of the protective devices about having Bipolar, the anger and rage that sets in through the mania, which can cause a psychosis, is dangerous, too... Ignorant people label bipolar as criminal, that would be inaccurate, Bipolar is protective especially in psychologically and physically harmful or dangerous situations. A bipolar person may be crying after you pushed her or him down on the floor, beating her or him up, but you had better be careful about going to sleep at night...
I LET Bart say some of the craziness that was said to me, i.e. "I don't give a fuck about how you are doing..." or "What you are saying about your work is your fault and that's some bullshit!" I respond to harsh tones, it is the least of my enjoyment among other human beings. I strongly detest it when people verbally use harsh tones with me in their voice. It activates a fear cascade in my mind, wrapped in anxiety, that goes to an automatic routing system I am unable to control to this date. And that routing system is unpredictable. Sometimes, harsh comments roll off my back. Most of the times, harsh comments make me cry--not because I am weak, but because the next thing I might pick up is some scissors and I might just jam them into the offending person's head... THAT scares me, because I have a strong sense of moral obligation and following the rules. That is important to me and I don't want to hurt "God's Creatures". My compassion kicks in and overrides those grossly negative, enraged, resentful thoughts, suppresses them, then turns that anger onto myself, because I can take it, I have been doing it for 40 odd years and it works... But the bad side effects of doing that is my whole psychological balance is disrupted, pieces of myself shatter like glass. And I hit the other end of bipolar, depression, which is worse.
It is the motivation to not hurt people like I want to and the inability to evenly defend myself that causes my prolific crying. The crying is my moral compass, it says I am not an animal, I am a human being that loves, feels, cares and counts for something and for somebody. And when an asshole, like a "Bart", VIOLATES that space, all I can do is look defenseless and weak. Let's just say, it took me 15 years to figure this one out...
Nevertheless, Bart verbally abused me. He did it. I allowed this person into my life to verbally abuse me. An abuser and a bipolar--what a combination! While not unusual, because I know other women in similar situations, mine situation has a tinge of California Fast Lane Stardom: see Bart was "relatively famous"--he WAS a professional athlete and he played for the local team with stardom. His name was in the papers, he can be found on the internet. With that fame came the dazzling parties, the cajoling, the carousing, the talk of the town, the paparazzi, the social stratosphere, the VIP rooms. And as a young adult, to me that was worth all the verbal abuse.
The flip side to that is the cheating... Recent studies have shown that abusers often cheat or have multi-variate superfluous relationships. Bart thought he could cheat. What was ironic about that is who he cheated with was zero competition to me. But see, that's why our "relationship" was NEVER formalized as "boyfriend/girlfriend" or anything other than. I LET THAT HAPPEN TO ME! Something I have a very hard time forgiving about myself. Why? 3 years of "investing" into a friendship that I fantasized to advancing and I get nothing out it? What was I thinking? What I wanted was a meaningful relationship, but I did NOT know how to do that, so I had to make it up along the way. Bart was an dumbfucktarded pawn in all of this, he could care less about human relationships, he didn't love himself. I recall one time as a PhD student, I had called him and he said, "Well, if you respected me, then..." and I exclaimed, "RESPECT, RESPECT--YOU CAN'T EVEN SPELL RESPECT!" and then he hung up on me.
Moreover, the cheating has upgraded to solicitous relationships these days. I hear of girls sleeping with girls--and they are not avowed lesbians nor support the lesbian cause--it is pornographic. Then they allow these young girls to be filmed and they wind up in some tabloid or youtube video. While in my younger days, some of that could have happened to me as my "almost famous" trials of "groupieism" started, I consciously squelched that possibility--because, having a PhD was more important to me than infamously obtaining my wealth through humiliation. And like I said, I have a strong moral compass, my family would have not gone for that. But wow, the times I could have chosen the "Big Time" through vicarious acts? That "Big Time" was short lived if I had selected that route... That is why I left it.
Nevertheless, Bart wound up cheating himself! There was this woman who was divorced from another very famous professional athlete that messed around with Bart. This woman was a gold-digger and she definitely did not mess around with no broke... And she chose the dumbest man on the team to play around with. Bart was it. Bart wound up getting this gold digger pregnant--let's just say this after the 1st OJ verdict--home girl was like, Nicole Simpson.
What got me is the way I found out. I told you in that day, I was so naive, ignorant and stupid. I could not see the telltale signs. The uptick in verbal abuse, the alienation, the "whatevers" and lack of communication, the only hanging out on weeknights vs. weekends, can only see you for 3-4 hours, etc., etc., etc. Moreover, I had also learned how to incorporate other avenues to my relationship happiness--I had learned how to cheat, so I was pre-occupied. And I still really cared for Bart. I would talk endlessly to him about my friends and some of them knew what had happened. But they also knew I had to learn for myself... Then oneday, Bart invited me to a game and I wondered why gold-digger was there--then saw she was 9 months pregnant--and dayum this PhD training: I put 2-and-2 together...
It took me year of constant crying myself to sleep at night--I was grieving the loss of the "fabulous life", my own selfish concocted greed, and how I alienated everything to be with this luser I had invested 5 years and my youth into my life. Oh, was I an idiot! Was I an ass!
Then, I proceeded to transform myself. I got my hair colored--I lightened by 5 levels, turned more red than the golden blonde I wanted. I started visiting a beloved aunt in Las Vegas more. I developed a closer relationship with my parents, oddly enough--they screened all my potential boyfriends. I finished up working on my degrees. I visited Paris, France! I'd take trips to nice places. I consciously invent reasons to be alone and not try to make relationships work. In fact, I had learned how to sabotage them. I invoked a 3 strikes and a 1 strike rules. 3 strikes if a guy failed to follow-through with me. 1 strike if a woman was involved. I did not date men who had small children--irregardless. Actually, I got angry emails about that, because a lot of Black men, who I preferred had children from previous situations. I did not care! I did not have children, so why do I need to deal with your inadequacies, really?
I learned how to not run up under any man by calling all the time or talking to him other than to set up another date. In fact, I went on a phone call fast, often. I wasn't interested in speaking to man, unless he has something interesting to tell me. Nor was I excited about any of his accomplishments--actually, if you are playing for keeps, you don't want to do this... It was all about me.com at this point! If he wasn't bearing gifts, he doesn't get to see me. End of discussion.
Then there was the intimacy part. When I was young, what did I know? But one day, I was reading a magazine at the hair salon and it talked about this concept called "The Tantra" and "erotica". So, hey, I read it... It was the advent of the internet, and pre-Google, so I looked it up, and as usual, the sex sites were there! But the Tantra was a bold new concept for me and the site was not as pornographic as it is today, and I read: John & Caroline Muir (no longer together) and Margot Anand books. I read how Spiritually cleansing and uplifting it can be to be intimate with one's partner. So, if one of the symptoms of bipolar is sexual degenerate relationships, and there is not medication to break that cycle, how does one break it? Under Westernized Medicine, one cannot, but I was also strongly into Complementary Alternative Medicine and had converted to a vegetarian after my "fall" that I was seeking a higher Spiritual plane, the Tantra taught me--but it cannot be it's acts, it has to be it's thoughts and compassionate faith--well, I am a very compassionate person just by virtue of having bipolar... Let's just let these energies flow together...
I was healed through the Tantra of my sexual indiscretions. I see it as giving my energy to the one I have invoked my compassionate love upon or shall I say Aloha Tantra Asante.
How does this help me surpass the Bart? Well, that person is a painful demon in my life, but now I see beyond all of that. If I were to meet him again, the conversation will be brief because really, he incapable of having a significant intellectual conversation at any level. And if I am with my husband? My husband's emboldened manliness will be asserted--my husband is so "happy go lucky" it would be like "whatever dude", "hang loose"!
And then after all the discovery & re-invention I have done... After all this soul-work I have made... WHY ARE THESE PAST LIFE MEN CHASING ME NOW??? I don't have any money! I'm married to a man who loves me and I love him, implicitly and completely. So, I don't get it? When I wanted a man to be in my life, none were to be found. When I least expected it and one of my lowest points, I found the greatest gem in my life. So why would I want to ruin it?
