Lamictal 150 mgs: My Mood This Week, and Coping with Relationships

My mood this week has been pretty good, considering.  Considering the stress.  Considering the anxiety.  Considering the sadness, anger, and feelings of betrayal.  The lamictal is definitely helping me feel more stable, less depressed, less apocalyptic.

Last week my partner and I finally had a productive discussion about our difficulties.  On the one hand, it was a huge relief to hear why my partner had been so cold and distant the previous few weeks.  On the other hand ... well, on the other hand, it was hard to listen to the hurt he's been holding in.  It was hard for me to learn I'd caused so much of it.  Most of all, it was hard to learn that my partner has spent the last several years violating what I thought was the foundation of our relationship -- honesty.  Our relationship worked because we both valued the truth.  We don't lie to each other, and we don't hide things from each other.  At least, we didn't used to.

After the productive discussion, my partner and I have felt closer than I have for some time.  Unfortunately, we could only enjoy a few hours of this before he left for a ten-day business trip.  The previous few weeks we'd been struggling like hell not to withdraw from each other completely, and suddenly here we were, feeling emotionally close.

Confused?  Hell yes.

I've been sitting with a lot of difficult feelings for the past week.  Grief, for the relationship I thought I had.  Guilt, for not knowing how much my partner was suffering.  Fear.  Lots of fear for the future, because it's become clear that we're going to have to restructure our marriage in a lot of ways.

My partner seems to feel much better; he's in a place where he's gotten a lot difficult things off his chest.  He's been carrying a heavy burden for years and he's set it down.

Me?  I'm trying to be optimistic in the face of some serious trust issues.  So we had a single, solitary productive discussion.  That's all peachy-keen.  But how do I know it really was productive?  How can I believe my partner when he says he's feeling better?  He's said that before.  He's allowed me to believe that our relationship was basically sound, if stressed by external circumstances.  I was proud of our marriage.  When things were tough, I would think to myself, "At least I have a strong relationship.  At least I can get that right!".

It turns out that this was all an illusion.  During the past several years, when I thought we'd gotten past the issues that plagued us when we were first married, when I thought we were getting along because we'd developed healthier conflict skills -- hell, when I thought we had a happy marriage -- my partner was very unhappy, and was hiding this from me.  That happy marriage simply didn't exist.

To cope with this, I've been trying to keep busy.  I do pretty well during the day.  Then night falls, and I get to feeling lonely.  My issues with trust, abandonment, and the feeling that I don't really have a home all come to the surface.  One night I drank to much.  The next morning I decided that this isn't healthy, and since then I've just tried to keep busy.

I've thought a lot about the friends I've had, and the communities I've relied on, and how they've dissolved.  My friends from college are all over the country, and we only see each other on Facebook.  Some of them have dropped out of touch completely.  The communities I helped to build in grad school have fizzled out.  One of my closest friends moved away, and hasn't kept in touch.  My remaining close friend will be moving to the other side of the country next week.  She's too busy to see me before she leaves.  She says we'll keep in touch.  We'll see.  I'm having trouble believing what anybody says right now.

It hurts to think about what I've lost only in the last year.  A year ago, I had my first grown-up job ever.  I was healthy.  I thought my mood disorder was in remission.  I'd was treating my ADHD with medications and scaffolding.  For the first time in my life, I felt like I was actually coping.  I had reached a point where I was a productive member of society, where the financial burden of running the house wouldn't fall to my partner alone.  I was finally, fully an adult.

Then, the job disappeared.  Then, I got injured.  Like the grown-up trooper that I was, I kept sending out resumes and I kept getting rejected.  Then, I lost my sanity.  When I felt better I began my job search again.  Then, one of my meds was discontinued, and the other med made me lose my will to act, my ability to think and feel, even my personality.  I lost four months to that medication.

Now, I've lost a lot of trust that I had in my partner.  I've lost the relationship I thought I had.  I hope that my partner and I can build something stronger in its place.