Last comment gets the most expensive gift from the SW gift store

@HootyTheNightOwl You rock. You are my official hype person now. :-)

@Dainbramadge Honestly, I'm surprised that you never mentioned it in this thread, too.

For all the rivalry we have going on here... we're all still good friends and the boys would have subscribed sooner if they'd known about it. 🙂

@HootyTheNightOwl I do kind of talk about it often in Q/A.
It's kind of hard to over look.
Kind of like what we talked about in the Podcast about trying to figure someone out that has these kind of mood swings.
Like the days that I am here this late is a good day and the days I am not around are the bad ones. Those are getting fewer and fewer lately.

@Dainbramadge It's great that your good days are outweighing the bad ones these days.

Most of what I've been used to dealing with as far as Bipolar goes is when the depression side was the predominant symptom of the illness and I had to keep the person who I was supporting strong enough to not self harm or something while trying not to trigger their dissociative identity disorder at the same time.

That made for an interesting year - especially when I was still trying to learn about bipolar type 2 at the same time as I was dealing with its effects as well.

@HootyTheNightOwl Yeah it can be really hard for the people around us especially at the beginning. I was hell on my, now, ex-wife.
On top of being bipolar I was on the wrong medicine and it made me a hundred times more manic. Those were some insane days I must say.

@Dainbramadge On the whole, I was quite proud of how he handled his bipolar... we had a small bump in the road between the time that he retired from work and his future plans kicking in - but I was able to remind him to stay strong because it was just a few days and he made it through.

I still miss him being around at times... though I accept that this period of my life is over now - our relationship could never be the same again, and nor would I want it to be. I just wonder how he's getting by these days more than anything else.

@HootyTheNightOwl That was great he had you to help him along.
With me and the wife it was out of our pay grade all across the board.
Crappy doctors made it even more difficult.
I got a lot better understanding of who I am now but she doesn't want anything to do with me.
I think, no I know, if she saw me now she would have a completely different take on what we went through.
Relationship are strange things. Two different perspectives of the same events.
If I may ask. What keeps you from contacting him??

@Dainbramadge I think that it would have been the same for me and the guy that I was helping had it not been for the fact that he was already diagnosed and his condition was "settled" as far as bipolar settles.

To go through the antidepressant stage and the fact that it can make mania even worse might have been too much for me to handle as well.

She may change her mind in time... it may be too fresh in her mind right now for her to look at you and see that you have your bipolar properly controlled now - especially if she was trying to help you though severe manic episodes (I still think that mania is much worse than the depression side of the illness because its more scary for those who are outside, looking in).

He ultimately ghosted me as I slept. I was left feeling suicidal and, had it not been for an ex-member of this site (who also abandoned me) I probably wouldn't be here today.

I ended up blocking the both of them on Facebook - though the ex member can still contact me via email if he wants to... I understand that he was going through rough times and I'm still prepared to help him should he reach out.

It was just a crappy thing to do to someone who had practically thrown themselves into flames for you and over something as stupid as a profile picture being changed without prior permission.

Not only was I left feeling suicidal, but I still struggle to get to sleep because of this to this day.

If he could walk out on me as I slept... what stops my man from doing the same thing??? (I trust him enough to believe that he won't).

It had very far reaching consequences for someone who already had abandonment issues to start with.

@HootyTheNightOwl The hardest part about people, for me at least, is trust.
I may interact and live with them but I don't think I trust anyone.
I just must not allow myself to attach to them in a way that depends on trust.
I mean I am pretty open about everything in my life, even the crappy stuff, with everyone.
So it isn't like I need to trust one person with my inter most vulnerabilities.
I think my openness is probably a defense mechanism that works like, if I tell all my secrets then nobody has anything to hold over my head.
I have deep seeded issues plus the Bi-Polar disorder that makes my counselors job a full time ordeal. LOL

@Dainbramadge Trust isn't always about secrets or even the vulnerable side of you, though.

If you ask someone to do something for you, then you have to trust that it will be done.

In my case, I struggle to sleep because of something that I'm not ready to talk about yet and I was abandoned as I slept. It took a lot for me to reach the stage where I trusted someone else to not just walk out on me again and I'd just reached that point when I was left at the beginning of the pandemic.

He didn't know that I'd just been put into self isolation for the first time - two weeks before the first national lockdown.

I spent the next four months clinging to the hope that he would come back, until my man found me and talked some sense into me. He was also able to ground me and give me more productive things to focus on, which I needed because I was still a mess.

I trust him in a lot of ways now... but I still have a little bit of that fear that he will just walk away - even though he has shown me otherwise.

Old insecurities die hard, I guess.