Divorce Recovery, Borderline Personality Disorder and Bipolar Disorder

 by Patty Fleener M.S.W.

I kept telling myself "sooner or later you are going to have to  tell everyone honestly how I got through my divorce, what skills I used that helped, what didn't. Was I pathetic or did I get through it like a warrior?"

It takes a lot of energy to ride the tide of a drowning relationship. 

It sure sounds like I am a strong person thus far huh? I've only been alone a little over a month now and already I have my site up and I even mentioned the word "warrior" in this newsletter. Don't let this fool you.

I have just started seeing a counselor after not seeing one for a long time and I told him that I felt that experiencing grief for a person with a mental health disorder with the bipolar disorder and the borderline personality disorder especially must be different that a person without any mental health disorders. 

I feel like I have had tunnel vision and the only thing I can think about and see is, guess what? Abandonment. My ex and I are not right for each other to say the least. I had forgotten that I had asked him to go many times before he finally went. I had forgotten how many times I told him I hated him before he left. YET, he left and he would not come back. I was abandoned and I couldn't stand it. I could not remember all those things prior to his leaving at all. All I could see and feel were abandonment and I * had * to get him back. It was absolutely vital. 

One person asked me, "If he were to really come back, would you take him back?" I visually pictured him driving here with his daughter and my first instinct would be to lock the front door and go outside and advise him that he is no longer on the lease. In fact my body physically experienced fear. He would have to leave and so would his daughter. 

I even wrote him a lengthy letter about me moving to where he is located and doing counseling together, blah, blah, blah. When I wrote it, I meant it. Would I do that? Not in a zillion years!!!! Thank heavens I was turned down. Interestingly when I was turned down I felt my heart was broke

In the past when I was * very * ill, when he left I would have felt invisible because I only felt I existed when the man was in my life. 

I'm fully and totally here now. None of me has left. 

So, try to make sense out of that - the abandonment.