Last year I was diagnosed with bipolar II and a comorbid GAD. I have written a lot about my illness in my personal journal, but this is the first time I have attempted to reach out to the “bipolar community” (what a horrifying term). But having read so much that other people have written about it, and how much it has helped me, I wanted to share with you my experience of dealing (or not dealing) with breakups and bipolar. It is pretty long, but then again nothing is really long in relations to a chronic illness.

It would seem clear to me that due to our condition and the obsessive nature that often comes with it, that people with bipolar would approach breakups and rejections in a manner different to those that don’t. My entire life I have been struggling with obsession, from songs that wont leave my head, to needing to learn all I can about subjects such as WWII, but nothing has ever come close to the misery of a breakup.

Losing a relationship is difficult for anyone. When your world has revolved around another person, it is incredibly difficult to break that gravity and move on. But in my experience bipolar is all about control. About trying to wrestle control away from a mind that is constantly trying to bully you. Being slave to the whims of a parent that hates you.

Basically throughout my entire adult life I have been in relationships. Jumping between one to the next. I know now that I was using this an anchor to keep me grounded, a crutch to lean on. Every time it has gone the same way, I seem to be losing interest and then when it’s all over I want nothing else. I spy through Facebook, plead, beg and cry. All my relationships have begun in mania and ended in depression.

However, it was my last relationship, which ended 18 months ago, that meant more than all the others combined. The only one where I have truly been in love.

We met at Uni and we were basically inseparable from the moment go. We used to joke that we had only ever been on three dates, the first lasted three days, the second two months and the last lasted almost four years. When we started going out in October I was in a really good place. The pervious winter I had gone through a mayor depressive period. It had climaxed with with a panic attack in January and then dragged on into the spring. I didn’t however know that it was depression, the mind is excellent at playing gymnastics. I called it ‘a bad period’, ‘worst time of my life’, etc. But never depression.

In fact even though I had lived with a friend who had been diagnosed with bipolar and even attempted suicide when we lived together, I never even considered it a possibility. And probably due to the up and down nature of bipolar, nobody had even suggested that I might even have depression.

So me and her met, moved in together in just under four months and stayed together. However, last year, during what was clearly a depressed period, while I was sitting on the couch escaping into the world of video games, she came home from work, fed up and ended it. I found out that she had started an online relationship with another man, which sent me raging, but it would take me a long time to get a perspective on my responsibility in the failed relationship.

It was clear from the beginning that one of the things we had in common were personal issues. Family problems and mental problems. She always said she suspected she was on the Asperger spectrum, as she had difficulty with empathy, fascial gestures and metaphors. That might be true, but I now suspect she has some form of a Narcissistic Personality Disorder. However, what is important is the issues relating me, and not her.

After we broke up I moved out of our apartment and left the country. I didn’t really have a plan, just that I had to go somewhere else. Originally I was just going to be away for a month or two, but I ended up returning back to the country where I live about five months later. I am fortunate to have a job that allows me to work on the lam, so i did.

This breakdown in routine and the inevitable post breakup bender sent me into a deep state of mania. I would work incredibly efficiently and fast in the day, and then get drunk and promiscuous after dark. This went on for months. Work, party, work, party, so little sleep. All the while pushing my emotional problems away from me, trying to get preoccupied in order to not deal.

But after a while I was spiralling down into an abyss. I would get more lethargic by the day, more sad when I was not either working or drinking. At the time I had started dating a girl who herself has suffered from depression. And one evening she asked me “have you ever been depressed?” The first time in my life anyone had even mentioned it as a possibility. I dismissed it out of hand, but just over two weeks later I would be in the midst of a full on panic attack and on the bottom of the world.

It all climaxed when my laptop got stolen. With it I was unable to work and unable to write, which had so often kept me from the edge. I locked myself in the room I was renting, stayed up until morning, reading, weeping and staring. I then slept till after dark, just scuttling into the supermarket right before closing, trying not to be seen by anyone.

This went on for about ten days, until one day I summoned up the strength to go to a local library to check my email. My boss was furious because I hadn’t been replying and my ex had sent a slew of emails about my stuff that was still in our old apartment, which now was just hers.

It all just became too real.

I replied to her that I was not feeling well and that I didn’t know if I was going to be OK. I left the library hyperventilating, crying uncontrollably, wanting to lay down and wave a white flag to the world, saying “do what you’d like to me, I give up”.

She called me and we talked. When we had talked after the breakup it had been with vitriol, resentment and just downright hatred. I hated her for having started that ‘relationship’ with another man and what was worst was that she couldn’t understand why that made me upset. I had sent her one or two drunken messages. Song we used to share, telling her I missed her, but all in all I had managed to keep myself occupied with other things.

But now, at the lowest I have ever been, I realised how better everything had been with her. How much stable life was, how great it was to share a bed with her, hug her, make her laugh. So I cried and pleaded and begged. She didn’t bite, not even close.

But she made a good point, which relates to all of us, what I was also missing was the stability. Those that have bipolar need more rigid structure to function than those that don’t. Our circadian rhythm is very delicate, our consumption of alcohol more fraught with problems and we are incredibly sensitive to changes in our environment. In our case she had also always been the one to make sure the bills were paid, as I have incredible anxiety around those kind of things.

After that day I returned back home. I still didn’t know or understand what was going on, just that it was not normal. I went to a psychologist, who is a wonderful man that I will always be thankful to. We were through about half the session when he asked me “how is your social life?” I replied with “well it is kind of weird, sometimes I feel like I have to be with people, and other times I just can’t.” I let the words slip and without speaking we diagnosed me at the same time.

I am ‘fortunate’ to have two close friends that are bipolar, but still it took all this time of self destruction and of needing help to even think about it. But of course I was. All my life this erratic behaviour, self destructive tendencies. Periods of incredible productivity, and then long crippling nothingness.

I was then sent to two different psychiatrists to get properly diagnosed and then about 5 months later I got into treatment.

This all happened a year ago, and it has been a terrible, long, difficult, yet incredibly rewarding process. I am more stable now than I have ever been, but I also know that this is a chronic illness that I will have to deal with all my life. However, most importantly for the first time in my life, things make sense.

I can look back and understand why I acted the way I did. Why I hurt myself and others. Why I couldn’t seem to control anything. Why life seemed to be a constant one small step forward and a giant leap backwards. But with that realisation also came the painful truth, I had destroyed my own love life. All relationships start in mania, end in depression.

I hope that being with someone that is in treatment for bipolar is possible, but it is painfully clear to me that being with someone that is running around with untreated bipolar is impossible.

During my lows intimacy and sex became nigh on impossible. Everything from the actual touch, to me feeling grossed out by myself, when bathing had become a chore. I would lose the willingness to do anything fun or productive. I only wanted to escape into TV or video games. Not talk, just never talk. Household chores were a mountain climb and the supermarket was on the other side of the planet.

During the highs I was worse. Constantly rocking between way too much social energy that no one can keep up with, to horrifying irritability and frustration. People are too slow to follow, too stupid to understand and too boring to be entertaining. I know now that the reality was I was too fast to follow, too all over the place to understand and too energetic to be enjoyable.

This realisation has only become possible through my therapy, through reading, writing and talking to my friends about my ailment. It is a positive process, the most positive I have ever lived, but it leaves such a bitter taste in my mouth. What if?

What if I had been diagnosed at 16 and not 26? What if I had been on my medication, gotten professional help? What if I could have made the adjustments to my life that now help me cope?

But these questions never help. They drag you down and make you miserable, but they, like the bipolar are there and you can’t escape what is there. You can just try to manage it. I know it’s over, it is blown and we will never be together again, even though I still love her. I pushed her away, and unwittingly treated her terribly, I have to live with that.

But there are also positives to be had. Had she not broken up with me, an act that sent me into that downward spiral, I might have gone years before being properly diagnosed. That would just have exacerbated mine and her torture. At least now I can deal with myself, and hope that one day someone else will be able to deal with me.

Every human wants love, but I know that it is not fair of me to share the burden of bipolar on anyone, until I have learned to properly carry it myself.