Posted by tabitha on February 26, 2004, at 3:13:31
We met accidentally and sat down together for a half hour or so.. He seemed so unchanged. Still such a serious little guy. I noticed we just don't connect all that well conversationally so I find myself rambling when we talk. That hasn't changed. He told me he had a hard time getting over me and was crazy obsessed for a while. I told him he had done a really great job of NOT stalking me and thanked him for that. He said it was touch and go for a while. Then he said he needed the experience in order to bottom out in his addiction (self-diagnosed love addiction). I wanted to roll my eyes at that but didn't. He applies the addiction/disease model to just about everything. I do admire him for coming out and telling me he had a hard time getting over me.
All our usual value differences managed to pop up in that brief conversation-- money, work, health care, personal growth path. There was one cute little moment about a grapefruit someone had left out, but as usual it was me making him laugh and not the other way around.
When we quit dating he had just started a medical study that got him free depression treatment including meds and therapy. He was having new psych patient honeymoon, saying he had suddenly realized how his whole life had been about coping with severe depression. Up til then he was violently anti-med and anti-doctor. So I asked for an update on that. His attitude has gone back to 'well I needed it then but I've decided to go off it' and he sounded proud of that. The study would have let him continue for 18 months but he stopped after 6. For some reason I felt the need to tell him that even for a single episode of depression it's normal to stay on meds for a year. I asked if he's under doctor's care anymore and he's not. I told him about relapsing and that it usually happens for me about 2 months after going off the meds. He's been off a month and is already having sleep disturbance, which he doesn't recognize as a symptom. I told him sleep and depression are both related to serotonin.
But you know, you just can't convince someone their brain isn't working as well as it needs to.
I guess it's my season for proselytizing about mental health care. It's approaching my mom's suicide anniversary. Man it's so frustrating seeing someone with bad psych symptoms who's not open to getting medical treatment.
So the moral of the story is... more evidence he was NOT the right guy for me, for so so many reasons, yet I still have some guilt over breaking it off, because my childhood training is HANG ONTO YOUR MAN no matter what. Yuck.
And maybe a chance to revisit the feelings about my mom, and denial of symptoms, and now that I think about it I'm generally pretty undermedicated myself. I feel good but I don't function super-well. But I'm eating my vegetables.
poster:tabitha
thread:317809
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20040219/msgs/317809.html