All My Love

I married just before turning 23. It was a love story of 8 years and many obstacles conquered. So u can say that i married a man i had great hope of being happy with. And he truly loved me..still does. But we are of vastly different cultures and while it didn't affect us before we were married, it did after, especially when the children arrived. The way his family understands love and family is different from mine. Cultural differences, family style differences. And then of course he has Bipolar Disorder, a disorder that causes the person to become emotionally unstable and affects their ability to think and function when they relapse. So for a long time, although we had a great love..we had serious trouble living together, and working together to build a family.

And then i know a couple who fell in love because they had so much in common - the same dreams and ideas about life – and were the perfect complement to each, both sharing the same culture and outlook on life. They have had no illnesses to throw them off track but are struggling to understand each other now after 10 years..as children have come along and both partners can't seem to agree on the best way to handle their family.

And then i know another couple who have had children, were doing very well together as a family.. but then the wife started working after being home for many years to raise the kids and her new freedom and confidence made her a different person. They are having a rough time now because she has changed so much..and both partners feel they are married to people they no longer know or understand. They are committed to each other, but it's a lot of pain right now..as they are still trying to work out how best to carry on together from here.

And yet another couple who have had children and are enjoying their marriage tremendously.. because both share same family values and culture. But they hardly have time with each other, as the husband has a very demanding job and it's what he has to do to support them in the comfort and style they want for their family and for each other.

In each of these marriages (and i believe now) in every marriage, every person struggles with loneliness..in one way or another.
And so i wonder.. is my marriage truly hampered by this medical disorder? Or is in fact every marriage tainted by some disorder after all, varying only in the apparent visibility and intensity of the consequences brought on by that disorder?

If this is true, then perhaps the only difference between partnerships that survive and those that suffer is that strong relationships are those where people (either one party or both) accept that they need to work hard at STAYING TOGETHER, MAKING IT WORK BY WORKING THROUGH THE CHALLENGES TOGETHER. If you accept that and decide to stay against all odds, it's almost as if you can't let go because you started out so in love with each other and it's someone you chose out of everyone and when it gets super rough, you remember..your heart remembers..that once long ago..it was so good..before kids, mortgages, bills, exhaustion, illness. And you can't help but think that maybe.. just maybe.. we still love each other deeply and if all these were taken away, we would see that love clearer.

Which is why maybe when you go away together and leave your daily life behind for a while, you get to see whether you are still good together. And if you are..then you realise it's not you don't love each other anymore..but you are both stuck being a grown-up all the time in a very grown-up world with very heavy grown-up burdens and THAT'S the real problem. You realise that as long as there is a desire to love and be loved, and the openness of heart to accept that over the years people age and become tired and you don't stop loving someone and move on just because someone has become ill/tired or too grown-up (also a type of illness if you ask me) ..then it CAN still work out somehow and work out well even. You have HOPE.

And so here i am still with a man i sometimes struggle to understand and feel so frustrated with, and at times a man who fills me with fear and uncertainty as i care for our very young children in the presence of his unstable emotions and less than desirable actions. Because you see.. every marriage has a lurking disability and every partnerships its share of challenges. To judge mine tougher is merely to accept that i need to work a lot differently from the others and what works for most doesn't work for me. But to say it doesn't work? Only if i don't try with all my heart, with all my love.

As Good As It Gets

19 August 2009

Before the diagnosis i spent many years trying everything i could think of to engineer circumstances and lifestyle choices, thinking our love would help cure his insecurities that were causing the drama and bad choices. I finally came to accept at the end of 2007 that perhaps, all he needed was me being affirming. That seemed to work best. And for a while.. it was really good because i had let go and accepted what was, and moved on to making magic from whatever we did have. A lot like playing when the sun shone and accepting that rainstorms were an eventual and inevitable part of life.

But when he got diagnosed, i had HOPE again of a cure to the drama and bad choices, and more importantly all the accompanying consequences. Of course BP has no cure but i thought maybe with meds and alternative healing, with better insight into his complex past that triggered the BP..he could really get 'better'. But today i accepted that 'better' is such a pressure for him, for me. What if this is as good as it gets? But most of all, what if trying to make him 'better' is perhaps what is keeping us a prisoner to the BP? After all, only the broken need 'fixing' and only what is substandard needs to be made better. I can imagine him daily, feeling a need to get 'better' and nurturing a sense of low self esteem with each passing day he stays acutely aware of the fact that he needs fixing. If this is as good as he gets, then i'm choosing today to be okay with that.

As my cousin, a beautiful doctor with a heart, said so clearly to me today- for BP, the best you can really do as a significant other is try and get relapses farther apart, reduce the intensity and damage during a relapse, and be there to accelerate recovery.

It totally freed me..to realise that i can't make him 'better', but that i can support him through relapses. I can't prevent rainstorms, but i can open umbrellas and prepare hot coco. That's the BEST i CAN do.

I have been living with guilt all these years that maybe if i had been more vigilant, more disciplined, more alert..maybe i could have circumvented some of his disastrous episodes; avoided the despair not to mention the financial damage. So that's what i have been like in the past years..ever vigilant, ever alert. I eventually progressed to living without fear of possible doom, but when he got diagnosed, i became obsessed instead on him getting better. But i have just pushed him away, pushed myself into a corner, made everyone a distant friend..because i have been living on a timeline hoping for a cure. Waiting for that breakthrough.. AND THEN i can finally LIVE.

But if this is as good as it gets.. then my waiting is over. I can start living RIGHT NOW. No more waiting means i can release the pressure on myself and on him to reach for 'better'. Better can just come if and when it's ready, and we can instead give our all to making life good as it is, with what we have right now..AS IS.

There will always be relapses around the corner. Like rainstorms, I need not feel bad when a relapse does become imminent, because it's not my lack of love or his lack of care that has caused it. If you live in the tropics, it WILL rain. No point dreading it, blaming it, or grumbling about it when a downpour does appear. But we CAN both try to minimise it affecting/damaging our lives and work at getting back on track as soon as possible. And for this, i also realise that it's okay for us to need special friends.. friends who realise along with us that relapses aren't a sign of failure, but a real fact of illness, and that we will need understanding/emotional support through such times and that we will possibly be less available in some/many ways until we are past the storm. Friends who know we have much to give, and who let us be our best..AS IS.

At least i now know..what to ask of myself, of him, and all the world.
And that means i can finally..freely live and love again :)

A Beautiful Life

I have just spent the last 20 minutes crying because i realise that he has never loved anyone the way he loves me. As damaging as he has been, he has loved me all he could.

It's odd but i have had to travel down this long painful, complicated road only to come back to where i started in life with him, except as a different person. I have been looking back lately, as an emancipated woman now, and wondering if i rushed into marriage for the wrong reasons, if i sold myself out.

But i can't imagine a more beautiful life than caring for and loving a man who genuinely needs me and on my deathbed knowing that i loved him the best i could against all odds..and that because of me, he had a LIFE, and a GOOD one..and my life would have been worth every breath i took loving him despite each and every setback ~