Submitted October 30, 2009

The worst of it began on my wedding night 7 years ago. During our engagement I felt perfect, on top of the world! I guess I was manic, lively, and that was the person my husband fell in love with.

Unfortunately, after the mania of getting engaged and married, the demons of hell were released on our honeymoon. I didn’t even notice how angry I got at my new husband over tiny things and after my expectations that were bigger than the world suddenly popped when he told me that there was no way he could meet the perfect prince expectations. With that, I held resentment for years. My extreme moods from high to extremely low fed into worse problems.

I had been diagnosed with Adult ADD and I was prescribed Ritalin. Little did I know that bipolar and ADD symptoms are extremely similar. Well, the Ritalin pushed me into extreme paranoia. We moved to a different town for my husband to go to school. I resented the pretty girls and began to feel that he was cheating on me. I felt so bad about myself being low all the time, never cleaning, and thought he wants someone else who is better.

I began to complain to my mother-in-law about our bedroom problems, and she suspected he was cheating. Going through friends and family members secretly, telling them my horrors about my cheating husband, I never directly asked him. My mother-in-law who should be on my husband’s side also never questioned him because he is so good at hiding it, he is too far gone. So she assumed from my exploded scenarios, which I exaggerated, that she should hire an investigator. Meanwhile, in the process, his reputation with people at church, his family, my family, and friends his innocence was destroyed.

Before he was supposed to go to volunteer at the hospital where the investigators were to video him leaving to have these supposed affairs, he decided to stay home and have a night with me. (All in the while, he was getting a 3.8 in bio-chemistry hoping to get into medical school.) My impulses and mania + Ritalin drove by husband into the ground when there never once was a thought in his head to ever cheat on me. He has been so supportive and loyal but I never recognized his love and compassion until I was diagnosed 4 years later with bipolar and not adult ADD.

He suffered extreme depression. His grades dropped to a 2.0. He stopped going to church, but since we’ve moved back, he is feeling better but he has lost his dreams of a real career and has been going to school more then 8 years trying to bring up his GPA. I don’t know how I could ever recover what he lost, but he is still with me and feels that being diagnosed and being on the right medicine was for the best.

No more exaggerations and fears, but there are left over residual looks from our family and friends not really believing he was a good guy through this whole thing. Our relationship is starting to recover, and my whims and selfishness has waned. I hope this story helps others. If anyone has any ideas about what I can do to show him I am sorry and make up for this huge tragedy, please share them. I am so lucky for a man to stick with me even through all I’ve done.