Mental Health: II

During the last two years of my first relationship, it was a known fact that I was miserable. However, I was also comfortable. I knew what every day would bring. I am not a person who thrives on change. In that time, there were several conversations about where I would go, what I would do. The where, was always to the Hamilton Boy. We'll call him D, for simplicity's sake.

D was my second long term, common law relationship. I had known him through the entire seven years of my previous relationship, having met him through a friend. She in turn, had met him at a Christian Youth Retreat. We became fast friends via the Internet, sending instant messages, emails, the occasional web cam chat, and even letters. I connected with him on a level that I had never connected with anyone, other than family.

We had many things in common. He had younger siblings, he had grown up largely in Small Town, Southern Ontario, he loved to read, and he was a Gamer. D was also an artist, and a computer tech and programmer.

In the two and a half years that we were together, we were equal parts blissfully happy and devastatingly miserable. As has become my pattern, I tried to stick with it, even when it had devolved to misery.

Many of you will be thinking that it was the 'Honeymoon Phase'. If only it were that simple. Unfortunately, the man I had fallen in love with was Bi-Polar, and borderline schizophrenic. And yes, I knew this from the start. Go ahead, yell at the monitor and shake your head at me. I'm sort of used to it by now.

About a year after we got together, we decided he needed to quit his job. His boss had a health problem that was causing him to be harsh, demanding and unreasonable with his staff and D was coming home everyday more and more pissed off. It was beginning to wear on our relationship. I had just started working full time at the Café, and was fully capable of supporting the pair of us on my minimum-wage-plus-tips income. After all, I had spent 4 years running a household on just that which also included insurance and gas for the vehicle. D and I had no such expenses to worry about. If anything, I was in fact ahead of the game in this scenario.

He quit his job, and things were better. He was excited to be focusing on his art and his computer tech and programming, even registering his own business. He even had a couple of road trips to nearby towns for a few days at a time to do technical work. But things weren't going as quickly as he'd have liked. I was still the breadwinner. His male ego just couldn't handle it. Thus he began a majour bout of depression.

My first relationship was strife with very loud, long and drawn out arguments, not because I was the sort not to let things go (in fact, back then I was largely anti confrontational), but because my partner (let's call him A) was the sort that argued as a way to relieve stress. He would literally change his position on whatever we were discussing until our conversation eventually devolved into an argument. He would then push my buttons until I raised my voice. The arguments often wouldn't end until I was crying myself sick in a corner. It was at this point that he would come to his senses and apologise. No matter how many times it happened, I couldn't see to stop before then, and he wouldn't stop until then. Looking back, I honestly think that he was sadistic, and while he may feel some remorse for what it was doing to me, his guilt did not outweigh his need for that rush of power that he got from turning an otherwise strong girl into a simpering puddle of jelly.

Because of what I had gone through with A, I took my anticonfrontationalism to new heights. In his depressed state, D was the sort of person who, when I tried to have a calm, rational discussion about something that I thought was a point of contention between us, he would automatically get defensive and make himself out to be the victim of an attack. The minute he raised his hackles, and his voice, I would drop it. And so all of the little things that come up between a couple could not be dealt with, were simply swept under the emotional carpet. As a result, he grew more and more distant as his own mental health declined, and I just kept going though the motions.

I remember the moment that I realised that it was over. He was walking around in the living room in nothing but a pair of Atari PJ pants. There was something about the way they clung to his frame that always lit a fire within me. I had always had a bit of an over active libido, so as I sat there watching him, and feeling nothing, no stir, no spark, no heat, I knew. I looked up at him, eyes deadpan, and told him so.

He looked crestfallen. It was the first time I had seen any emotion other than irritation on his face in well over a month. He even teared up. He sat down on the couch and we held each other as we talked about it. We should have ended it right there. We should have laid our frayed relationship to rest. But we loved each other so much. We wanted to try to make it work.

He professed that he wanted to fix things. To make it up to me. But he was setting me up. He just wanted to find a way to make it my fault, or at least that's how it seems now. Whether this was his intention or not, is largely besides the point now. The damage was done. For five months, he dragged me through the gutters, blaming me for everything as he became more and more delusional. We would kiss and make up, and he would forget, and go right back to being vexed with me.

One day at the end of April, he got pissy about something, again forgetting that we had made up, and when I tried to actually address the issue, he turned around and drove his fist through the wall behind me.

Now I may be the kind of idiot who will allow long term mental and emotional abuse to the point of brainwashing, but I will not stand for physical abuse. I went from the jelly spined creature that I had become over the years of abuse from A and then D, to the iron willed, empowered woman that my mother had always hoped I would be. He was told in no uncertain terms that this would be the last time I put up with his circular bullshit. The next time that he 'forgot', I was packing his shit and he was going to his mother's.

A couple of weeks later, while he was at his mother's over mother's day weekend to help plant some flowers in the garden, it happened again. He must have known I would end it, then. He avoided my phone calls, my texts and my emails. I wanted to speak to him over the phone to be sure that it sunk in that we were over. Instead, I received a scathing email from him, telling me what a horrible human being I was, and all of the reasons that he was ending it. Most of which were complete fabrications of his delusional state.

Needless to say, I shot off a response thanking him for painting me as the monster and told him he really needed to get his head on straight. Agreed that it was over, and told him I would have his things packed in time for a friend to drop them off to him.

Ending that relationship was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. Leaving A was just a matter of realising that I was no longer in love with him and that I could only grow as a person by leaving him and leaving my comfort zone. But I was still very much in love with D. For the first time in my life, I suffered a truly broken heart.