A Happy Relationship

About a year ago, right around the time I found Hooking Up Smart, I started experiencing turmoil in my relationship. I had moved in with Popeye's mom (and her boyfriend, and her sister) and was having trouble knowing how to interact with them. Then Popeye learned he couldn't afford to go back to school, with one semester left, and shit hit the fan. He wasn't getting along with his mom's boyfriend, I wasn't getting along with his mom, and for a couple weeks I seriously considered breaking it off.

Things got better when I moved out of his mom's house and Popeye started spending all his free time at my new apartment. It almost looked like it might be okay, and then BAM I got sick. This was not your normal sickness; this was psychosis (and yes, the doctors tried to diagnose me with schizophrenia at first... who knew bipolar disorder had similar symptoms? I didn't). If I had seen Popeye in that state, I'm not sure what I would have done; I would have been alarmed for our future.

But he stuck by me the whole time. He helped take me to the ER, he listened to my crazy-person rantings over the phone when my parents took me home, he drove across the state to my parents' house and helped them take me to a different hospital (a better one!), and about a week after I came home, he drove across the state again in between working night shifts to surprise me for my birthday. And it wasn't just the sickness; the medicines took a huge toll on me. I wasn't myself for several long months after the episode. It's hard to explain, but it's like I had no emotions or feelings, or even a personality, and I couldn't focus on very basic tasks (it's no wonder I stopped blogging). Popeye still talked to me on the phone everyday, and he visited me a few times until I had the strength to visit him. I'm sure some of it scared him, but he never gave any indication that he was having second thoughts about us. It's easy to say "well obviously, it's not like you were purposely making yourself ill," but mental illness is alarming in a way that other illnesses are not, and it comes with a stigma. Even now, when I see people at school that I knew last year, I just tell them I had a "medical emergency." And these are social workers!

Anyway, it's a sad truth that it took such a traumatic event for me to realize how lucky I am, and understand that I shouldn't have let family drama come as close as it did to ruining my relationship. But once I came out of the hospital, all I wanted to do was see Popeye. The happiest time of my day was those 15 minutes when he would call me between jobs, and all spring and summer I constantly talked about how much I missed him (I drove my parents crazy!). My mom said that once I moved in with him, I would become fixated on something else, but the truth? That hasn't happened. I'm just happy for his presence, even if he works the night shift and spends most of his day sleeping. Finally things are smooth and we're slowly moving towards creating a life together.