Again, YEARS of cbt. I am a functional person who deals with illness. I'm not cured, there is no cure. I deal with some stuff. Meds destroy me, and I don't have time or desire for therapy at this point. I'm doing the best I've done in my entire life. I have two great jobs, I'm passionate about the things I'm doing in my life, I'm seeing a wonderful person, and I am living as well as I have in years. I have a long way to go, but I'm doing pretty okay all things considered.

We might legitimately be in honeymoon phase, and I can see it being taxing on him especially down the line. I'm not delusional (right now) so I know this won't last forever, but I want to have a great time right now and be good to each other and stay close and be friends when we've moved on in our lives if at all possible. There are no issues, that's the whole thing. There's really Nothing wrong, so I have no cause for complaint and no reason to push him away aside from being just so insecure, depressive, and having such a low self esteem. I want to "protect" him from me when I'm sad but he doesn't want me to do that, and he doesn't want to be apart from me when I'm sad. He knows what I'm doing. I've told him I'm doing it. We both see it happening, and yet when I'm going through it, I have to ride the ride until it's over. I just don't want to take him with me. I don't want to succeed in pushing him away.

I can't control what my emotions put me through. I can breathe my way through panic attacks for instance, I know how to identify when I'm having an episode. I've told him that when I ask for a moment, space, or silence that it's an immediate need that helps me sort of "reset" so I can have no sensory input while I work to process whatever causes me to overload. It's just that kind of thing. I don't get violent, I don't make trouble, I just have to feel tremendous pain. I cry, I hide, I couldn't do math if you asked me. It's very vulnerable and scary and it takes me a while to come back, but I come back and I ask him what happened and he'll tell me and I'll apologize and he'll tell me if I did anything weird or if he has some kind of trouble understanding what happened. I'm sure it's weird for him, I mean, it's weird for me too! He's been really sweet about it. I want to thank him. I want to be good to him. I just want to do what I can so while I have him in my life, he knows how much it means to me that he's so willing to accept me even as flawed as I am.

I'm really doing my best here to be understanding of the other side, and to help him so my issues don't ever hurt him. I'd rather suffer myself than to watch others suffer, I think we all feel that way. He basically has to sometimes see me suffer. That's my brand of "crazy" that's all it is is I'm so used to being sad and miserable that I don't even know how to deal with being cared for and happy and I don't want that to be dragged down just because it's my vice. It's not fair when it involves others, when someone else has to hurt with me. I've learned enough to know that doing right by me is the best I can do for others, so I'm trying to help myself as much as possible. That's why I'm here, I'm trying to keep things positive. My relationship is wonderful. I want to keep it that way. I don't want to hurt him or me by being troublesome.