The one thing that most people associate with Bipolar is bad husbands with anger issues. It might sound stereo-typical but for the majority that is true. You have to be extremely carefull not to share your anger/disappointment as it can erupt in the drop of a hat and you wig out. I am a much more “peacefull” bipolar case than the usual but only due to the fact that I had grown up with the rage and it keeps me in check…most of the time…but I can rage with the best of them.
They say that Bipolar is inherited and it shows. My dad has serious anger issues…so much so that I have found all kinds of ways, since I was very young, to avoid helping him in the garage or garden or anything that could cause him frustration. I can’t even help him with his computer. Even though I am fixing it and I know exactly what to do to fix it, he gets frustrated and impatiant and just loose it.
Now I realise that I don’t know how other fathers react or how they are supposed to react but what BP Rage does…especially to a child, is definately not accepteable. You have no control over it and I have lost track of the number of tools, mowers, doors and so forth that’s seen the ugly side of my dad. It’s not just anger, it’s rage. Rage that rips your heart out and thrashes it about as if you were responsible yet all you were doing was helping. Still, even as a grown man, it can knock me to the ground with fear. You know he doesn’t intend to hurt you but it’s the kind of rage that make you fear for your life. At times it had pushed me to the brink and even though it has never been the cause of one of my attempts, it had gotten pretty close.
But as I say…I can rage with the best of them to the point of unctrollably shaking. Everytime I loose it like that I feel so ashamed and can’t help thinking of my dad and what I had just put the other person through.
Some days I wish I was thrown back into the furnace so I could be reused instead of sending me out into the world knowing that the mold I came from is broken and distorted…