THE (BI)POLAR EXPRESS

Warning: Venting is about to occur

..... ok so I'm washed out, wrung out, cried out and everything else out that you can think of this morning after a nasty little Bi polar moment last night .... it was so horrible, you kinda have to laugh but don't want to repeat it in a hurry. Let's just say that it is a bloody wonder that our girls managed to sleep at all last night, which was a bugger as it was a kind of important 'night before the first day of school night' and they needed their sleep.

As some of you are aware, my beloved was diagnosed about May last year as having a classic case of Bi Polar 2 disorder ... this is after three years of being together, spliting up, vicious arguments, periods of unemployment, exhausting periods of mania and lots of moments of distrust. For whatever reason, I decided to be a part of all this longterm and set about researching the net, researching his family (must to their disbelief at the time), researching his past relationships (now that was difficult!) and as a result, managed to get him a) to a doctor b) to a psychiatrist and ultimately to a diagnosis and treatment.

Now that he is pretty much under control (medically speaking) and fully employed in a role that he loves, it is sometimes easy to forget that Craig has a mental illness that needs continual monitoring and working around. When he falls silent or (flat, as Caitlin calls it) or is uncommunicative, it is easy to think that he is just being an jerk and make it all about me, rather than reminding myself that he actually may be having a bad day rather than actively wanting to push me away. Unfortunately one of the major problems with a Bi Polar sufferer is that regardless of whether they are manic or depressed, they often don't recognise their own symptoms until the people close to them start asking them if they are ok. In Craig's case, he struggles so much with the fact that he has a mental illness that instead of saying "Yeah, I'm having a bad time and I need some space today", he will say he is ok, when he is very obviously not, which frustrates the hell out of me.

I'm not sure what has triggered this latest flatlining, but when I come to think of it, it could have been the conference in Queenstown last week and the fact that the reps budgets were all increased dramatically, but is more likely to be the fact that the Manager who employed him (who was aware of the Bi Polar but gave him an opportunity anyway) resigned from the company whilst at Conference and he now starts the year with a new Sales Manager.

Ok big breath, cast my mind back to how we managed last time and think about how to best support him......

Thanks for the rant, have some new stuff to post in the next couple of days so am looking forward to getting that up here.