Okay, let me try to put this the best way I can. I am writing this from the psych ward, and I am hoping this can be a breaking point for me. I'm getting new meds and a lot of therapy, but I'm still having a good 20 anxiety attacks a day, so hopefully I make sense... I'll use Fallen's post to highlight:
Fallen1 said:
Everyone is batshit insane in their own way. You are mentally unstable to a degree greater than that found in the bulk of the population. You know this, but you try not to display it when you first meet someone. You can bluff at normalcy for a while, but eventually the cracks start to show. People are typically interested in their own well-being first and foremost. When they see the crazy lurking beneath the surface, they bail.
Ok, that's the problem. The good news is, if you work long, hard, and smart enough at it, you can bring your behaviour within the bounds of social acceptability. You know all that bullshit about being happy with yourself before you can be happy with someone else, etc etc?
This is a complete contradiction, and many of you have made it. You start by saying that I must have been "bluffing normalcy" or hiding my problems. I was not. I was actually as stable as I ever have been in my entire life, and not only that, I discussed this topic with him as soon as it was relevant (i.e. I saw a real relationship forming, and I had a bad moment because he showed up drunk and reminded me of my alcoholic mom), and for the record, he has been on antidepressants before and also has an alcoholic dad and said that he understood completely and did not care.
My crazy ass reaction, which is what you've seen in this thread, was the result of a pretty messed up situation. I may have reacted more strongly than most people, but I think everyone here would have a seriously negative response if the same thing happened to them. How many of you have seen someone go completely batshit when a relative dies regardless of previous mental status? How many times have you seen someone go batshit after getting dumped, even in much less painful ways? Bad shit happens to everyone all the time, and people have all kinds of reactions, expected or otherwise.
But that all aside, you say that people will be okay with dating me once I fix myself - but there is no "fixing" myself. I have a disease, and no matter how much I work at it, it's never going to go away completely. For as much as my early abuse caused the problems I have now, which are largely correctable (and I'm really starting to deal with them effectively - you should have seen what happened when my high school bf became a drug addict and left me), even once I deal with that all the way I still have a genetic basis to this problem. Everyone in my dad's family is batshit, and I thank the lord every day that I don't have things as bad as they do. I may love myself fully one day, but the nature of my issue makes it likely to be permanent.
So what do you suggest I do? I'm going to have the "eventually the cracks start to show" problem eventually, whether it's at two months or two years or two decades. So am I doomed forever because of this? Am I going to be "bluffing" forever so I'm screwed forever? Or am I actually okay because "everyone is batshit insane in their own way" and that's just how everyone's relationships are? And moreover, what in the hell counts as "socially acceptable"? Wouldn't it seem that this guy's issues, whatever they were, were far more socially unacceptable? I have never done something even remotely so terrible to a person, especially someone that I know has issues.
I know for a fact that I am a MUCH better girlfriend than a lot of "normal" girls I have met, yet no one tells those girls that all of their relationship problems are somehow their fault for not working hard enough on improving themselves. I know for certain that I am working MUCH harder, and I am much less "psycho girl" than a lot of, if not many women - I know what my problems are so I actively work on them in the context of relationships, which most people simply don't do, and I myself didn't either several years ago. My first relationship imploded in a big clusterfuck of my insecurity and his unwillingness to communicate. I know full well how that all works...
You all also have seemed to miss where I HAVE had "healthy, normal" relationships/personal interactions with people. I have had some of those too, even ones that ended up in ending a friendship or getting dumped or dumping the other person myself, because it was an unhealthy situation. It's just that after each successive REALLY shitty one, especially since they seem to come out of fucking nowhere, (and I feel like I have had more of them than most people, especially in proportion, which is why I started this thread - to ask, because no one I know has ever had this sort of thing happen even once), it chips away at my base of stability and really pushes all my buttons having come from my background. I believe less and less that I will ever find a decent one that lasts, which turns into a spiral of bad thinking.
I took myself off the market for three years to really make a serious effort at improving myself so that I could be a better person for myself, because I am damn tired of feeling worthless all the time, and hopefully be a better person for someone else who could love me for me. I had been working three jobs, going to school and maintaining excellent grades, helping my best friend with her psychological issues, and keeping myself in excellent physical shape, all while dealing with my abusive mom several times a month and not caring, which was something I had never been able to do in my entire life, let alone on top of managing all the other aspects of my life succesfully, which I had also never been able to do. I was truly optimistic about my future. And then the first time I stick my toe in the pool, the guy does the exact worst thing he could possibly do to me.
And I flipped out. Of course I would. So would anybody, even if not as much as I did. But the thing is, I have watched jilted girls do MUCH more insane things than I could ever dream, and no one suggests as a result of that temporarily afflicted behavior that somehow the problem is all on their end. Just because I freaked out and have a disease doesn't mean that I'm any different from someone that freaks out who is "normal." I think there's a huge double standard here, and it's very counterproductive.
To put it simply, I'm looking for support, and I'm getting criticism, which is completely antithetical to my recovery. I already blame myself for everything, and that's why I'm lashing out so much - I feel like these kinds of things are proof that I will never be loved, and in the heat of the moment, that's enough to trigger my illness. It's not something permanent. It's something I'm working on. But acutely, it can be a big fucking disaster. And I was really hoping a community as diverse and normally supportive as this could at least give me some reassurance and support before laying into the tough love, which to be fair, is also a little misinformed (not that it's anyone's fault - there's no way you could know everything about me, and I'm sure it's intended positively, but that's something you must take seriously into account). No one would ever suggest that someone who is prone to a major health crisis of any other kind would be bad relationship material because they might have a really bad week or even month or end up in the hospital or whatever. Granted, of course, someone with a physical illness is ostensibly not as "bad" in a relationship as someone with a psychological illness, but at the core, it's no different. People with pain conditions get pissy and grumpy all the time - is that "acceptable"? What constitutes my worthiness as a partner? 50% recovery? 75%?
But that's all really a topic for a different day in a different thread, when I'm hopefully feeling better. At this point I feel like many of you are attacking me, and that's what I want to address. Many of your "tough love" posts have come off as completely condescending and critical and not like any kind of love at all. Case in point:
If I sound slightly cynical, its because I have a couple of friends who attract nothing but women like you.
Now what the fuck is that supposed to mean? Women like me? You mean ones that are super caring and forgiving and take care of their man after massive surgery and don't ever interfere with a guy's "guys nights out" and don't care that he is all up on other hot chick friends at the club all the time and even look past his somewhat severe issues and the fact that he peed on their floor after showing up unannounced and completely trashed spouting all kinds of rude bullshit one night only a couple weeks in? The ones that lay their cards on the table at the beginning of a relationship to allow guys to bow out gracefully before anyone gets hurt? 8(
There are certainly ways to say things without being so harsh, and saying "I don't mean to be critical but" is not the way to do it when someone is in such an acutely critical situation as mine. Or at the minimum, wait til they've chilled out for a little while before busting out the big guns. You don't put someone with a broken femur out in the hallway and tell them to start walking. Instead of feeling like I was getting help here, it actually just made things worse. I spent four days in a torturous hell, shit, I'm still feeling awful but at least I'm coherent part of the day now, and my efforts to reach out just ended up making me feel worse. I was literally so distressed that I felt intoxicated.
I suppose this is getting too long-winded, and not even necessarily relevant any longer. I'm going to be stuck in the hospital for a few days, and I'm hoping it will give me a chance to make a clean break and get my head going the right direction again. I guess my point is that you shouldn't ever be so quick to conclude, and always give a shocked person a little time to recoup before laying on the tough love portion of things. Yes, tough love is great - I'm a huge advocate, maybe too much of one... - but not for someone who is in the midst of a crisis.
I've gotta go get drugged now, so I suppose I might be back tomorrow, but probly not til I get back home...