Bipolar Relationship

When you are in a relationship with someone who is bipolar the feelings of being overwhelmed can be so intense.  There are those happy times when everything is good.  Or, so it seems.  You try to always look on the good side, the happy things.

These past couple weeks have been a real eye opener for me.  Everything depends on me.  It felt like it did before, but now, it's even more so.  When Tony was around, I could talk to him.  He may not always understand, and he always had that twist that everything was fine and would work out.  But, he's not here.  I can talk to him once a day for 15 minutes on the phone.  During that time, he doesn't want to hear the bad or that I can't make it here.  He only wants to hear how I will be sitting here waiting for him.  That I will take every penny I can find and give it to rent so that maybe we will have a place to live in another couple months.
My logical brain is screaming.  NO!!!!  If I put every cent I can into rent, then maybe, just maybe there will be enough.  That is if I can sell all these lizards, and somehow potty train a 2 year old (including night-time), oh, and that we don't need anything like toilet paper.

Still, I am supposed to clean up this house, pack up everything I can, sell everything I can, take care of the kids, all the while being the good other half and keeping up the smiling face.  Oh, don't forget to make calls, figure out what's going on with everything, and do all this alone.

Ah, I'm sure you are now thinking, why doesn't she just leave?  Why did she stay so long?  That's hard to answer all the time.  Perhaps I have a dependent personality.  I don't know.  Maybe my rose colored glasses got painted over instead of just tinted.  But, Tony is a loving father to the children.  I believe in keeping family together if at all possible.  I have a strong conviction that mental illness is not so much different from medical illness.  You wouldn't leave someone because they were medically sick?  Is it wrong to leave them because they are mentally ill?

I don't have the strength or energy to take care of him, and our family, and I failed miserably at trying to do it.   I feel that I am the one who failed because I couldn't catch all the manic episodes.  I cannot blame him for being bipolar.  Still, I couldn't make him take his meds all the time or follow-up with the doctors he needed to.  I couldn't control him finding ways to spend money on things we didn't need.  I couldn't help but want to believe that I could trust him to tell me the truth always.  Too bad, bipolar can be so delusional.

Unfortunately, the delusions of someone who is bipolar can effect everyone around them.  You will want to believe them, and that it is reality.  Instead, you can't.  I do love Tony with all my heart.  But, my mind knows I cannot trust the bipolar.