My Bipolar Life

I am a perfectionist. I am always frustrated that I cannot be perfect though. I am rather far from perfect. Don't get me wrong, I can make myself appear pretty damn perfect for a limited amount of time. I am attractive, intelligent, and for short periods of time, on the right medications, I can get along fabulously with other people. I have been trying to deny my bipolarness my whole life. I have learned to act my way through every day life. It is exhausting. It is a problem when my feelings and emotions don't reflect on how I think about my life. I can be perfectly happy with my life and be hiding under my covers crying, trying to block life out of my brain. I know, it makes no sense.

When I was 22 I had a complete breakdown, and spent a week in a psychiatric hospital. I started dating the man who is now my husband the day after I got out of the hospital. It wasn't like I had just met him. We went to high school together and had a we-were-sleeping-together kind of relationship for about a week. So we kind of picked up where we left off. A month later I found out I was pregnant. two months after that, we got married.

I managed to convince myself I wasn't bipolar anymore. I do this often. I blamed my mood shifts on pregnancy hormones. I always describe the time I was pregnant as nine months of being depressed or pissed off. I was not fun to be around.

Somehow, our marriage survived, and it is alive and well now, 5 years later. I was lucky. I accidentally got pregnant with someone I love. Someone who loves me in return.

I've never wanted him to know the extent of my psychological problems. I have a hard time believing anyone would understand, especially someone who has never felt like screaming or crying for no good reason. I have panic attacks, then feel humiliated that it happened in front of him. Then he compares my actions to those of a child, and I feel worthless. I feel like my husband deserves a wife who makes sense. I feel like my son deserves a mother who will not emotionally scar him.

I don't explain to my husband what happens in my head, because it doesn't make sense and I don't want to be a crazy person, I don't want him to know I'm a crazy person. But after 5 years, it is getting exhausting. Every time I have a problem, he assumes I hate him, or I hate my life. He always thinks I want to leave him which is not really the case. Yesterday for example, life was all fine and good, but I was in a terrible mood for no reason. He spent the evening trying to figure out why I was in a bad mood. The problem was that there was no reason. 

I have just recently been trying to accept myself this way. I usually hate myself for it. Like I said, I am a perfectionist, and I usually hate myself for being unable to be perfect. I want to be a stable person. I want to be able to control my feelings and emotions. I want to be a stable mother and wife. I'm starting to understand that no matter how frustrating it is to me, I just don't get to be the person I want to be. I don't get to be a stable person. I have tried, and tried, and tried, and gotten burned out trying.

I feel the worst for my family. My husband literally lives to make me happy, to see me smile, to see me be happy with my life. He doesn't get to have that. No matter how good I feel about my life, I will always be freaking out about something, or more frustratingly, freaking out about nothing. I feel awful for my little boy who does things like picks me flowers and gives them to me when I'm crying hysterically in bed because he "wants me to feel happy."

I also have no friends because I'm terrified of the day they would realize I'm not ok. I'm not a normal person. I'm defective. It would only be a matter of time. I can only keep up appearances for so long. I have been abandoned by pretty much every friend I've ever had. By that I mean that they refuse to speak to me. I never did anything to them, I gather that I was just too much to deal with.

Every social event terrifies me. What if I have a panic attack and completely lose it? What would people think of me? I would die of humiliation. I want to be ok. I want to be emotionally stable. I don't get to have that.