I'm back up because I'm too awake to stay in bed. (It's 5 a.m.) I had enough sleep.

Now the title of my thread seems strange to me and untrue. That's the cycle I go through, recurringly. I get fed up and exasperated with him and feel ready to drop him off in any facility that will take him. After a few days of thinking I've had it, that feeling of being depleted evaporates, and I get a second wind. From where that renewed sense of commitment comes I have no idea. But, now, I don't feel the least bit mad at him, or hurt by him. I don't want to escape anything. Most of the time he's been awfully patient with his loss of mobility. He has never whined about his loss of health, or said "Why me?" I admire him for having a combination of courage and acceptance that makes him grateful to wake up every morning. I wish my attitude toward life was half as good.

So my melt down has blown over, and now I feel ready to cope with what comes next. My mission, now, is to find the best rehab that will take him. And, contrary to how I felt the past few days, I now want to be involved in his care. It doesn't seem too heavy a burden that I want to distance myself from. But I do need to be realistic about what is doable by me and what I need to let others do.

A pdoc told me, after six years of knowing me, that he thought I was bipolar, based on me having some extreme reactions to hard challenges. I don't know what name to give it, but, when I get stressed, I do have very wide mood swings. How a situation looks to me changes radically, as I try to adapt to a higher level of demand on my ability to cope. I freak out and get mad and hysterical. Then, eventually, I settle down into a strategy that I figure out. But I seem to go through enormous emotional upset, trying to stabilize. Stability comes, but only after I bounce around with extreme emotion. Now I'm stable. This will last until I get destabilized again. Then I'll be transiently nuts, until I calm down once again. Going in and out of emotional crisis frequently, like that, is a sign of poor emotional health, and it further undermines emotional health. I tend to think it was a failure by me to mature on some front. It came across to that doctor as intense irritability that I guess they now interpret as a form of mania. Whatever it is, so-called "mood stabilizing" drugs (which I tried) did not help me at all.

Being able to maintain some semblance of mental equilibrium really is necessary for life to feel manageable.