I’ve done a lot of the “daily prompts” lately, so I thought I would change it up a bit. Being a recovered bipolar and now sober three and a half years, looking back on my life and where I am going now has been a beautiful thing. My boyfriend is absolutely amazing and is a man that I have always dreamed about being with. Not only is he heartbreakingly handsome, but he is one of the kindest, caring, smartest, calmest, and most responsible men I have ever met. There is a big issue with his daughter though; she suffers with severe mental illness and is the main reason why we can’t physically be together right now. However, I am taking the time to let the relationship progress, and despite a recent breakup, I’m hanging on tight. He is worth loving, and I am worth the happiness I have always wanted, so a little time and patience is all that is really needed.
I haven’t heard from my ex’s mom in a few weeks – the last time we spoke, she told me he had been sent back to a mental hospital for a fourth time in two months after several nights of using drugs in the street and going back and forth to the terrible neighborhood that he’s always known. It hasn’t been going well for him, he has gotten beat up pretty badly several times, and even lost the suit he was going to wear to our wedding – that broke my heart completely because I still have my wedding dress. I love him so much still – I have been thinking about him a lot lately, and as I am growing closer to God and my church, I am wondering if spiritually the Universe is trying to tell me something. I have been hearing “Green Eyes” by Coldplay a lot lately on my Pandora rotation, and not only does that song upset my boyfriend, but it would also upset him more to know that I cry and think about my ex every time it comes on. He sang that song to me when we were together, and he told me he used to sing that song to himself all the time in jail when he thought of me – during that time we were both incarcerated in the same detention center, and I was still holding on to a hope of a future with him, despite all the bad shit that had happened.
Since coming off of probation, and my ex receiving the last letter I sent, I think it’s time to let him go. I want him to find peace, and as I think about what I really feel, feelings of dread erupt in me, because I do not wish him death – but honestly, that’s his only way out right now. He runs to the streets every chance he gets; he is getting beat up so badly out there now and losing so much weight, he has become a ghost of the man I fell in love with all those years ago. He is going to get killed out there, and I often wonder if he does, indeed, have a death wish. I can only imagine what he’s feeling – last night I found myself in tears thinking of the nights that he laid next to me holding me tight and begging me never to leave him. I promised I never would, and as tears come in my eyes now, I feel like such a piece of crap for breaking that promise amidst all his suffering now. I wanted nothing more than to always take care of him, and as I battle the never-ending struggle with my weight, I realize that none of that ever mattered when I was with him – and that full acceptance of all that I am, came directly from his love for me. Now I know, you are all thinking, “you don’t need a man to justify who you are or your beauty,” but dammit it helps, and even though my boyfriend now loves me with everything in him, he hasn’t been with my physically every day like my ex was, so that fear of rejection is still ever present.
So today, as I live the life I have always prayed for, despite this whole weight issue, I think back on my ex and our life and how much I really needed him as much as he needed me. I would have never left New York, never left my parent’s house, and never gotten a life of my own and the independence I had always dreamed about. Today I have real-life friends who I actually spend time with, I am around REAL people, and I am off the internet and out in the real world as much as possible. I also have such a full life and the relationship with my parents and family that I have always wanted. Today, I get to show up and be relied upon, I am sober and proud, and on so little medication, I don’t even consider myself bipolar anymore, just recovered. From the years of the endless revolving door of the mental hospitals, the years of the drinking and drugging, the years of self-abuse, self-neglect, and self-destruction, I have finally come through to the other side, and tomorrow never looked brighter and fuller of opportunity. So, I think it’s time I put Giovanni away for good. I love him, but I have to move forward.
Stay tuned.
An Inspired Odyssey Through✨️Ink & Stardust✨️ 