Saturday 9 February 2013

Living With Realizations

There are times I feel like I am in a nightmare. Like the events of the last two years did NOT happen to me. Like I never discovered things about myself I now have to live with. 

Two years ago, my life was like anyone else's. I was single, on the verge of finding love or at least I thought I was. Overweight, yet stubborn that I will find someone I truly love.

I did find someone exactly two years ago. Yes, exactly two years ago I fell madly and deeply in love. But, with a woman.

Just a few months ago to the event of falling in love, I remember sitting in church and tearfully praying for love in my life. God knew I needed it, and needed it real bad. I remember saying, "Send me someone to love. If not a man, at least a woman?" I am not sure of the state of mind I was in to have made that statement to my Creator, but for some reason, He took me seriously. 

And He sent me a woman I loved so much more than I loved any friend, any crush, any flame. I didn't know I was capable of such intense passion until I found myself crazy about her. The fact that she was just playing me for her own material and personal gain at work was completely blind to me. All I remember was that I wrote her name on my heart and soul and to this very day, in spite of all the crap she put me through, all the ways she has come close to destroying me and my life, I still find her name there, albeit faded. The reason? I haven't yet found anybody I have loved as much. Nobody has ever come close to making me feel as alive as she once made me feel, even though it was all an act. It was an act that changed my whole life, albeit negatively. It brought a lot of torment and horror that I am dealing with even now. 

For the first time ever, I have quit my job on a panic impulse. The panic was due to the fact that people at work had come to know about us. And know about us in a way that is unfavorable for me. They looked at me like I was a freak and disturbed to an extent enough to have found women attractive. Like I was the WRONG ONE in this supposed relationship I had with her, which wasn't anybody's business in the first place. Like she seemed alright, even though she went to such an extent to succeed in her career and I was the weird one for being genuine and caring to the extent that I didn't care about mine. 

It is unfair on a level that I cannot even begin to understand. This is NOT the life I wanted. Especially not now. Not when I had almost moved on from what had happened two years ago and had decided to go ahead with my original plans of finding a great guy and getting married. This brings us to my first realization about myself. I may be a bisexual. And though I had always believed that this was genetic, I am now inclined to believe it is not. 

This brings us to my second realization about myself. I may be bipolar II. And if it wasn't for this second realization, I would not have discovered that my first realization was a disorder linked to my second. I mean no offence to the LGBT community. I am always going to have immense respect for them. But, I don't think I was born gay/straight/bisexual. I think I was born like everybody else but developed this sense of identity that was different from everybody else's.

Though I have strongly been in love with only a woman so far, though I did love a guy madly back in college, which wasn't this strong,  I don't think I am gay. I have felt equally attracted to men all my life, right from my first crush to my last one. For some reason, the events of my life have led me to trust women more than men, and allowed me to let them in while I kept the men out for unclear reasons. It could be linked to the event of my mom passing away when I was 17, but then again, only time will tell. Just like time told me two years later that I am certainly NOT gay and my feeling bisexual is linked to my being bipolar 2.

No, I haven't been diagnosed with bipolar 2 and I don't think I want to be. One, because bipolar 2 is a very mild form that doesn't really require treatment. I think that every third person is a bipolar 2 these days. Two, I cannot afford to deal with a mental disorder given that my own dear sister is mentally challenged since the age of two due to measles and brain fever. I need to be able to take care of her before I can let go of my life and start acting like a patient. Three, I have no backup in life. I have friends who care about me, but not enough that they will care about me for life. I don't think anybody has such friends. Such things only exist in movies. Reality beckons that we grow out of that idealism and accept that our friends, no matter how much they want to be there for us, cannot, because they have their own lives and problems to deal with. 

My family needs me to earn. I survive on the fact that I have a job. And yet look how much trouble a woman got me into. Just because I chose to love her with all my heart. Once bitten, twice shy, I am now wary of every woman who comes into my life. I cannot go through this emotional and mental hell another time.

I have wanted to be married since I was 15. A woman came in the way of that when I was 28, but I cannot let it hinder the rest of my life, a life that God has in store for me. While a major part of me refuses to forgive her for the damage she has done to my life after knowing fully well how much I needed true love and companionship in my life, a small part of me cannot get itself to get even with her. 

My will that is torn between loving her and hating her, between trusting people and not trusting people is what makes me believe I am bipolar. Up until I was in my 20s, there was no two ways of looking at anything. There were no mixed feelings about anyone or anything. All of a sudden, I find myself thinking two ways about everyone and everything. It is terrifying and lonely in a way. Terrifying because I know that this is a problem I have to deal with for the rest of my life and lonely because people will never know the reasons behind my conflicting behavior.

My friends know about the girl I loved. But they do not know that every day I feel torn between my emotions. They just think I have very poor willpower and that I change my mind instantly. They do not understand why. And, I can never tell them. For being exposed as a bipolar is scarier than being exposed as a bisexual. You can always deny that you are a bisexual, but there is no denying your bipolarity. 

Yes, it's a nightmare. This is NOT the life I had in mind. I had visualized it differently: As normal and as weird as everyone else's, nothing more and nothing less. Yet God seems to have a very difficult purpose in life for me and I am here in this world, as His instrument, to carry out His will. In a way, this is the only thing that is making me feel better about my problems. The fact that all this is happening for a reason. And that I am not alone in my problems. I am sure that bipolar+bisexuality is a problem that many men and women out there face. 

I am here with the intention of baring my soul in a way that cannot damage my life. This blog is after all not a person who will entice me to trust her and then leak my secrets to the world.

I feel safe here. This is MY parallel universe.

Welcome.