Our Dark Love in Mental Illness Self Stigma

Our Dark Love in Mental Illness Self Stigma

by

Ouroboros

Back Story of My Life

   Let me ask this one question, "Have you ever fallen in love with someone?" The majority of you would say, hopefully, "Yes." And if you haven't fallen in love yet, well it is good to understand it to know what it takes to be in love. According to psychology, there are three departments in love that create nine distinct types and there is one Ace in the hole.

    The type of love I am talking about is romantic. Let me share with you my journey in this endeavor I call, "Dark Love." Why do I call it Dark Love? Well, some may say dark love is lust or hatred, and to be abstract it makes sense, but dark love in my definition is that love has not been fair to me due to my mental illness. 

Empathy From Me to You

    When you live with trauma from your childhood, live with the disappointment that real life isn't like your favorite love story movie, and when you have given romantic love a few tries and each one was worst than the last, you tend to disbelief in ever finding that happy ending. 

    This reading is not me bagging on romantic love because everyone has had their tribulations and although every story ends the same way. There is cheating, abuse, lies, secrets, love triangle, one-sided love, and differences between monogamy and polygamy. 

    So let me share my summary point of how love became this "Dark Love" and not the "Tainted Love" song that both the Ramones and Marilyn Manson sang. Dark Love is the secrecy, the hidden, untold inner reality that one with mental illness pertains to conceal, fear, struggle, worry, and sorrow. I will explain my factors of what I mean and tell me if you go into these struggles as well. Even if you only read this then comment or like that's fine. My blog is all about exploration, empathy, embracing, and empowerment to unite.

Preliminary Factors of Our Dark Cloud:

     My Dark Love was the disarmament of offering myself entirely to the cause and to give the individual and myself to experience fully 100% this union yet I take the blame for my side of the woods. One thing I can honestly say is I have never been unfaithful. That is why when I was in my untreated condition and addiction I remain single due to the fact my body had a price and my soul was caged to be untainted, safe, and suppressed from a touch of temptation.

My Dark Love Factors:

• Concealment - Hiding my entire self even my mental illness from him, from any guy I had feelings for.
• Fear - I worried about him looking at me as sick, a threat, and see me as the disease.
• Struggle - If you don't let the guy know at first it becomes difficult to mention during the building of the dating and relationship.
• Worry - The fear of having him find out, how am I going to explain? How will he take it? Will he stay or will he go?
• Sorrow - Depressed that he left. Shame that he found out that I lied. Guilt carrying a secret life that is not true. Regretting that I should have told him. 

    Have these feelings or emotions ever come about your heart? your mind? your very soul? If it has then, you already know carrying any of these secrets or fallacies, is not fair to the partner you have and to yourself. So the whole point of Dark Love is not against the person you are in love with or dating, but it is to yourself. My message in this post is to stop hiding who you are.

  I wished that I would have told all of my lovers in the past about my conditions. I should have warned them of my symptoms:

Warning Signs or Precautions of Misbehavior:

• Becoming overly cautious and heavily guarded with my vulnerabilities that could not allow them to enter my safe space or in my heart, thus finding myself in mistrust, hesitation, unreachable.
• Suspicious of every movement and action he did that fed from the trauma in the past hurt that instead of offering benefit of a doubt we push them away thus ending up alone, miserable, sad.
• Going to twists of behaviors, emotions, and thoughts that I did not give him a fair warning to prepare for my symptoms that caused him to feel useless, worthless, and unnecessary.
• Feeling distress, panic, chaos, and disorder in my life that was not brave to tell him to leave and sparing him waste of time, hurt feelings, and burning bridges with them.
• Making him feel unable to help me in my unknown symptoms forcing him to leave, to stay to get hurt, and to scar him from future relationships.

Conclusion to this Post:

    If you love someone and it does not matter if you are trans, gay, lesbian, bi, or straight, mental illness not only does it affect you, it can affect the one you love too. So my advice is to be honest, be proud, embrace it, accept it, and always love yourself first before loving another dude, chick, or them. Again I thank you for your time and I will share with you my words of power (Mantra). 

"To conquer others is to know power. To conquer myself is to know the way." (to you)

"To conquer others is to know power. To conquer yourself is to know the way."  (given to another)