Posted on July 17, 2008
Filed Under Journal, Recovery, mental illness |
Well, its been a while since my last post and there is good reason for that. Lately, life has been really hard to understand for me, so I had to take some time to sit back and analyze my life and where the changes that I have made recently in my life have taken me and since I am making changes in my life it has had an affect on my life not sure whether that is a good thing or bad thing but I have taken the last couple of weeks to look back and reflect on the consequences of my actions and the changes in my life and where it has brought me.
So I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to try to help people understand me and give you a little look inside my head and how I try to analyze things and try to make them right so that I may try to bring a wholeness back into my life and it all starts with my relationships and my marriage to the people I cherish and love the most in my life.
Life is constantly changing and along with those changes in my life there seems to be many different things that happen to me. When I have an episode due to one of my mental illnesses I seem to go to this very dark place within myself and it doesn’t matter what I do or say I can’t get out of that place until my episode has had it’s way with me. It’s almost like the incredible hulk and once it happens it happens and there is no turning back.
For the last couple of weeks I have been in this place that I don’t like and it is really starting to have an affect on me and my relationship with people and with my marriage. I was lying in bed last night thinking to myself that all my life it seems that I am the type of person that seems to take two steps forward and one step backwards. As of lately I have been really complacent and there seems to be no change or relief in sight.
Though I want to talk about relationships for a minute and let you know how it has an affect on a friendship and even a marriage. All my life I have had people taking care of me in some way or another and after I quit my use of drugs I was still a needy individual and I needed someone to put me on the right path for success in my life and that is when I met my beautiful wife Laura.
When I met Laura I was in real need of some help in all aspects of my life and she was there for me when I needed her the most because anyone that has dealt with a mental illness and a drug addiction problem knows that when you first get sober that everything seems hopeless and that basically you need all the help you can get and that was me for the longest time and then as time went by my needs towards Laura got less and less, I realized that I did not need her to “take care of me” as much, but I did need her in my life and in other ways.
During this time I was learning a lot about myself and a lot about life and people in it and finding out who I was as a person and I started growing up for the first time in my life and my point that I am trying to make here is that we all change as people but not anyone person changes exactly the same as another person does. Everyone changes at their own pace. Though most people with mental illnesses tend to change at a slower rate rather than a person that is perfectly healthy.
So now I am in the predicament with all of my relationships in my life because I am changing at one pace and the people closet to me are changing at a different pace and that is causing big conflicts in my life and I don’t know how to deal with it. Especially with my marriage to Laura!
Because I don’t think Laura looks at herself as being a care taker towards me and though she doesn’t see it she still has that care taker tendency towards me and wants me to be like it was when we first got together. Maybe she does not see it as taking care of me but more like she is fulfilling her “wifely” duties that she feels she has. That is where we are having conflicts within our relationship and marriage. And that is one area that we need to work on and communicate more about. This seems to be where our biggest miscommunication is and sometimes it seems that we have not found our “click” yet in our marriage to where everything seems to run smoothly and has us being on the same level of acceptance of each other.
The conflict here is that I have gotten past that stage of needing someone to take care of me and all I want is acceptance of who I am now and know that no matter what that she will be willing to work with who and what I am and adapt herself but still keep all of the great qualities about her and even the care taker side of her but yet use that to her advantage and not let it get in the way of our marriage. Because of this problem I sometimes feel that we are drifting apart and I am scared because I am worried that if we drift to far apart that we may never find our way back to each other.
So basically what I am trying to say is that no matter how much someone loves you and no matter how much you love them that people do change sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worst. But you always have to make a constant effort to try to adjust to those changes and be aware of your surroundings and try to do the best you can to put a healthy enough balance in your life and make each choice and action that you do count.
Also, love isn’t always enough it has to be a mutual love for each other that brings the two people together and they have to be willing to adjust with you and the changes in you and accept every part of that person as a whole and accept that they are different and that is where the love should come in.
To Love someone because of who they are is hard work but if you try the person that you love should see you trying accept that and work with you and not against you and you should never try to turn someone into what you want them to be but yet accept them for who they are and grow with them and not against them.
No matter how hard you try you will soon realize that you can’t change a person you have to accept that and when you do that and that alone will be the deciding factor on whether or not a marriage or a relationship will work or not. Because two people must work together in a marriage not just one because a heart that is not whole is not pure, and without a pure heart there can’t be true love.
I know that I always have to be on top of the game with my mental illness. That will help me to focus on other aspects of my life, so that I can stay on top of them, because sometimes that is the hardest thing for me to do. This is how I have been feeling lately and I have been having a hard time expressing it in person so I thought this would be a good way to get it out and I hope that it can be beneficial to others that are dealing with similar situations.
1.) Make sure you understand your own mental illness and how to deal with your episodes due to your mental illness before you bring someone else into the picture. Example: Girlfriend or Wife.
2.) Have a good grasp on Balance in your life and use it effectively in all aspects of your life.
3.) Fully Accept people for who they are and never try to change anyone except yourself and love people for their difference’s.
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