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Mon 28 Sep, 2020 03:37 am
This is kind of a long story, so bear with me...
I've pretty much lost everybody who mattered to me in the span of a year, and it all started when my dad got diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer in May 2019 and less than a week later, we found out dad needed an amputation above the knee, requiring a complete left leg prosthetic for what's left of his leg. Dad has recovered from both and so far in 2020, the cancer has not come back this year, but 2020 makes him severely vulnerable to Corona Virus, with his severe asthma, diabetes, heart disease, kidney problems, and everything else. My dad's 59th birthday was four weeks ago on Labor Day weekend. He's too young to be considered "retired", which is why he's had trouble getting full ride disability, but because of this, we had to sell my only house I've lived in for 20 years with my mom and dad and I was homeless for three weeks, living in a hotel for almost a month when COVID19 hit state of Maryland where I live and Gov. Hogan shut everything down when it first got here.
Last year in 2019, my karaoke friends and my boyfriend were becoming toxic and abusive. My best friend from karaoke that I treated like a sister and loved her like a sister, she HURLED me out of her friends' circle, blocking me on her Facebook multiple times. My boyfriend tried talking sense into both of us, but he ended up siding with her and trying to be my "coach", or really my "parent", and try to tell me how to be a good and better person to win her back as a friend. He suddenly became controlling and verbally abusive and possessive that when I needed him the most for some comfort and for him to actually "be a man" and stand up for me while my dad was in the hospital and my mother was distraught and wounded from depression because hospital security banned her from ever visiting her husband, and dad did not get this memo, and the nurse gave him this shitty excuse that "your wife is a bad, terrible person!" right in front of my dad while on the phone with mom- My boyfriend, who was supposed to LOVE me, said, "I'm out. I've been waiting here in this car all this time for you to come look for me, and you're not ready to spend the weekend, and all you want to do is TALK? No, I'm going home. Bye. I'll talk to you when I'm ready."
After dating him for three years, the week of Guy Fawkes Day that November, I dumped him. It was the nastiest thing I'd ever done, and now I even totally regret ever losing my virginity to him because he really was a bastard who hurt me in the cruelest way by emotional abuse.
I was diagnosed with bipolar I disorder, severe anxiety, and moderate-severe agoraphobia when I was 26 in June 2015. Right now, I'm 32 years old and I feel like the clock is ticking LOUDLY like ringing in my ears, enough to give me migraines. The karaoke friend did come back to "talk some sense into" me to get me to say "I'm sorry for my behavior" and "you're always right and I'm the one who's always wrong", trying to make me feel sorry for her because she also went through something tragic in her family regarding her mother's death last year and some bad news about her fertility, especially since she can't marry her fiance that she lives with until she finally leaves DORS (Dept. of Education/ Dept. of Labor service for people with disabilities- she's legally blind due to juvenile diabetes), who has done nothing but torturing their students like me and several other people I know, and finds a job by herself. But her problem is, she only sees the bad traits in her friends that she can't fix, so she gets rid of those people in her life, because she can't see the flaws in her own personality and accept that she's a difficult person who has problems keeping friends because of her trust issues. After constantly sending me hate messages through my phone and a long essay of preaching in my Facebook emails, I had to block her and her fiance too, which hurt even more. It broke me so much that I swore I would never go to karaoke ever again and I will never find love for the rest of my life. It got much worse later, because my only friend that I have left, my best friend from college, is moving to Oregon because her parents are retiring to live in Hawaii and she has no place to go other than her sister's house in Portland, where there are less boundaries to the medicines she needs than Maryland- Maryland requires that you need registration and a card that confirms you can get this medicine, whereas Oregon, you don't need to re-certify from your doctor. It's more legal. She has no friends in Oregon, and I pretty much have no friends left anywhere in Baltimore County, as all my friends and family live all over the place.
It comes down to this, and I'll try to be quick. Out of complete desperation, I made a STUPID online dating profile, making it as crazy-desperate and really lame and depressing as possible, with a lot of facts, tons of them. I also wrote in one of the answers that I never had a date to prom and my friends I went in the limo with in high school decided that my blind date should be the nasty kid who bullied me in freshman year Spanish class by kicking my book bag, throwing crumpled paper at me, and calling me ridiculous names like "crazy bitch" and "Pipi Longstocking" because of my bangs over my forehead that naturally curled upwards because I have wavy red hair. So when he said, "Sorry I don't have a corsage for you," I wanted to punch him, but I was too nice, so I didn't. And I concluded my sad story of high school by saying, "If we both were in high school together and I could redo senior year all over again, I would ask YOU (random guy on OKCupid) to be my date to prom. Would you say yes?"
One guy out of thousands finally answered because he was so excited that this girl writes essays in her profile, I gotta talk to her!
That man, four and a half months later, is my new boyfriend, out of the ashes of Corona Virus, for we talked for hours on end almost every day since. We stayed online and talked on Zoom or Facebook video chat for hours and hours all month long since Star Wars Day (May the 4th, get it? Well, we're both big nerds), until Phase 1 of reopening Maryland was in effect. Our first date wasn't until June, and even then, we weren't allowed to touch. Not only was my dad high risk from dying from COVID, but his mom was disabled too, and he had no father- his dad died when he was five years old, and since then his family kept getting smaller and smaller. My dad's family has lots of uncles, aunts, and cousins, but they live all over the place and it's way too hard to keep in touch with any of them. It's even harder to stay in touch with my dad's friends too, and the ones who do contact me are untrustworthy, especially my uncle's new girlfriend who's pushy as hell and super annoying.
But safe to say, my boyfriend are now at the "I love you forever" phase, and I feel like the honeymoon phase has finally passed. Because COVID19 does serious and horrible things to you when you have bipolar and your SO has even more mental illness problems than you (I won't tell you what they are here), the honeymoon phase is totally OVER once you hit the Phase 3 of reopening everything. You're now constantly losing patience of when you want to start living together, and while on the subject, when can I apply for a job for myself. Where are we going to live, that sort of thing. And it bugs you every moment. And as soon as you start thinking weddings, marriage, children, and you get jealous of your "fairweather" friends from high school and college you never see anymore who all have wonderful jobs, husbands, fiances, and babies of their own, you shut yourself down and say, "That will never be me" and you list reasons why not. And when people tell you, "why is courthouse wedding a bad idea?" "Can't you just elope?" "You can do something totally different other than a father-daughter dance" (I can't dance with my dad- he's in a wheelchair and a power chair will never fit in my mom's car, she can't lift it either) -you list off all the reasons why not, and they're all logical understandable reasons:
-I'm an only child, I have no brothers or sisters
-My SO has no father, so no father-in-law exists
-My dad could die at any time, I'm practically an orphan now
-My mom doesn't know how to 'lead' in dancing, she only knows how to 'follow', and she has health problems herself, including carpal tunnel
-My cousins won't do it and my dad's uncle, is also untrustworthy and not the nicest guy, dad's brother is also out of the picture because of his mean girlfriend
-I have no friends, he has no friends either, except for people he knows at work
-Courthouse weddings are cheap, and I want to wear a real dress and not my jeans and t shirt for a real wedding. I still want to get married in a garden or that place where they hold the Ren Faire in Pennsylvania at a winery that looks like a castle (and yes they do weddings there)
-But if I 'elope' without telling any of my family that we got married on some tropical island, they'd all look at me in despise and hate me for not inviting them, and then they'd ask me, "Well, are you throwing a party or reception then?"
-Also, I lost my pretty white prom dress from 2006 when we lost our house, so there is No Hope for me to find a wedding dress to replace it. I've done enough Google searches for a woman like me who's short and fat- I'm 5 feet tall and not an inch taller, and I'm a flabby and frumpy 160 pounds, my doctors are sick of telling me I'm obese and I need to go on a diet or I'm not allowed to have children when I'm 35. There is no such thing as a beautiful blue or white ballgown for a woman who's five feet "petite" size (I'm TINY) and a really fat size 12 in Macy's dresses and Gloria Vanderbilt jeans. I may be a redhead, but I'm convinced that I'm UGLY. And all the dressmakers that could custom make your gown are either in the city or Glen Burnie, and my mother and I both hate those places. The traffic down there is murder and Glen Burnie is too close to the airport and the people there are gross conservatives who are deeply against my views as a progressive democrat.
That all out in the open, I feel as if I'm boxed in, especially with my job and career outlook. I've taken quizzes and tests too many times to count with so many therapists, job coaches, and professionals at lots of Career Centers. They all said my art score was too high, and they can't find a suitable job for me. I've quit journalism where I got my college degree in, because I'm angry that the rock and roll music journalism field I wanted to work for has turned to hip hop and pop music bimbos, reality shows, and biggest of all, politics, and I hate Trump, I'm a Bernie Sanders supporter and a Black Lives Matter and LGBT supporter, end of rant. (I'm one of the nice ones, I promise) So, the only job I can have is being a writer or an artist or a singer, and I don't want to go into those fields because I know I'll never make any money from those, even though I'm amazing at crochet and I love karaoke. My boyfriend also tells me I'm fabulous as a writer, I just finished a book that's in the running for 2020 Watty Awards, hope I win.
Still, I feel so empty inside that I have nobody who feels the same problem I do. I'm not going to have a father of the bride, I'm doomed to have no job, I'm doomed to have no friends at all, so what do I have to look forward to? I don't want to get married yet, but I do want a house because I hate this apartment so much more than when I lived in my own house with my parents. Now living in an apartment with mom and dad is so much worse and more problematic, I hate it. I want to live on my own by myself, but I need roommates, and as I always say, for people my age- "Everybody's married," so I can't find people I know who want to live with me. Excluding my boyfriend, NOBODY wants to live with me.
Bottom line: Does anybody else have that feeling that they have absolutely no one, no hope of a job, no future, and no friends to help you in this horrible time? Just need some comfort right now.
Honey, I was 240 pounds when I got married in 1992, and I had my choice of wedding gowns. There are plenty of gowns out there. You just need to look.
And I realize your bipolar disorder is making you feel like everything is awful and it's no use to do anything. Mental illness is a liar. It is lying to you when it tells you that.
In all of this (and perhaps I missed it), I could not find one bit where you're getting any sort of treatment. If you aren't, then start. If you are, then talk to your doctor about your meds, which I suspect aren't working as well as they are supposed to.
I also used to work at a wedding blog. I have seen a ton of gorgeous weddings, everywhere in the world. Venues can be made beautiful. There is also no rule anywhere in the universe that says that the ceremony and the reception need to be on the same date and in the same place or even in the same country. If you want to get married now, then go to the courthouse and deal - and then have a lovely reception later.
Covid is smacking us all around, so recognize that you are far from alone in this area.
As for the father-daughter dance, etc., if you are hellbent on dancing and not doing something to try to accommodate your dad's condition, explore the possibility of an uncle or a close friend doing the deed. Also Google wheelchair dancing because it really does exist. Same with the giving away of the bride. You can improvise and make it different. And the same, too, with your mother not being able to lead in dancing. So. What. That means you step up, and you do the leading.
And finally, don't go into marriage because your boyfriend is pushing you. Marriage is a lot harder to get out of than a dating relationship. If you are at all concerned or have cold feet, listen to your gut and put it off. I am not saying you can never marry this guy, but it would be far, far better for both of you to be getting married from a position of mutual strength, rather than mutual desperation.
You have the internet at your disposal, so start Googling the solutions to your problems. For the most part, if not 100%, I swear they are out there.
@jespah,
Thank you, that does clear up a lot.
I do have a therapist, there's a lot I left out, but I haven't talked to my therapist in two weeks because last week she was booked solid. We're also still doing nothing but phone interviews because seeing each other in person is impossible right now, and I feel that my therapy only gets better when I'm in her office, but that's impossible right now and I hate venting my problems to her in my bedroom when my parents are still in the living room/kitchen/dining room/dad's office (which are all in the same room, this apartment sucks). My parents are always in earshot of my therapist appointments and it hurts when my mom always listens to every conversation I have. I don't want to lose my therapist, though. I've been seeing her for five years and she has been helping me so much with a lot, and COVID19 is just a speed bump that feels like a huge collision.
My boyfriend and I don't want to get married YET, and he's not being pushy about it. but he does want me to live with him because my parents are not taking my mental illness seriously as I am. My father has been threatening me to hit me if I don't leave his apartment whenever I have rapid cycling or mania/depression, or whenever he's angry at me that I'm not being helpful to him and he thinks I'm disrespecting him. Every time I tell my parents nobody appreciates me for anything I do, so maybe you should have me sent to a hospital and I should just get out, both of my parents scream at me, "DO IT! Go to a hospital! Don't grab your shoes, don't take your purse, don't take anything with you, not even a mask! You don't need a mask to go to a hospital, LEAVE NOW! Go to the hospital on foot!" And Franklin Square Hospital is a long walk on foot because it's across town in Rosedale. I can't get there. That is why living with them is almost that of unbearable. I want to move in with someone I know, but everybody I know is already married and they don't want me living with them. I also have no job and no income, so for that, I'm screwed as well.
Both of us agree that marriage is not a good idea for at least two years. But he wants us to live together. Not now, but when I do have a job, which is the first step. He's also trying to leave his job at Target so he can get a better job- he's already done some interviews at another place and we'll definitely know if he got the job by October. (I'm crossing my fingers for this) He also wants to learn to drive, because he still has no license, and something bad happened that prevented him from learning to drive, he had to leave driving school immediately for a family emergency. He's planning to learn to drive as soon as possible.
He's basically been the voice of reason this entire time, and he's incredibly optimistic that things WILL return to normal in 2021. I've always been the voice of common sense and "let's be practical" because I'm more Irish than him (I'm an Irish girl, he's German, in our ancestry, that is, we're both born in Maryland), and I've pretty much been doom and gloom.
But you're absolutely right. Mental illness is a pathetic liar. I like how you described it, that's perfect. Bipolar is definitely an asshole, I couldn't agree more. And I think I've been taking this too hard these times, so maybe it's time to ease off on the Google searches for a while.
Thank you.