Hello, Blog! I'm so happy that you're here and accepting of me, even though I've ignored you for more than two years. Writing is therapeutic for me; it helps me to organize my thoughts, so, Blog, I'm thankful that you're still willing to listen.
The good news is that it was a "fairly" good 26 months. Not perfect, not smooth, but acceptable, and I thought it would go on forever.
Unfortunately, things happened. My friend was hospitalized for an undefined medical problem and underwent a challenging period of mental instability. Establishing an effective medication schedule seemed to be trial and error. Meanwhile, he went several days and nights without any sleep at all, continued to loudly record his thoughts on his IPAD, and compulsively took his blood pressure every hour, 3 times in each arm, sometimes with normal readings and sometimes with spurts at crisis hypertension level. He wrote dozens of notes to himself and placed them throughout his house and mine, all organized in a fashion known only to himself.
The end was caused by a specific incident which made me afraid of him. For no apparent reason, within a few minutes he changed from being my loving significant other to shouting at me to leave and never come back, and throwing personal possessions at me. I left hurriedly and returned a few days later, accompanied by others, to collect a few belongings from his house.
UPDATE 6-17-2019:
During the last few weeks I have spent many hours researching our "issues" and have learned a great deal about personality orders. I think they are HIS disorders, but he would opine that they are MINE. In any case, the relationship is gone. Retrospectively, although my friend was good TO me, he was not necessarily good FOR me, as I (and others!) recognized that he failed to treat me with even minimally proper respect. Nonetheless, I loved him, and as I said, I thought we would be together forever.
In the weeks following breakup, the days initially seemed interminably long and I felt very empty. I now understand that some kinds of love are like a drug -- you know it's not good for you, but you keep trying for one more high.
Thankfully, I'm well on the road to recovery. What worked was eliminating all contact (VERY DIFFICULT!), continuing research on personality disorders and how I relate to them, and using writing as therapy (including some rhyme, which I was never able to do previously). Friends suggested that I just remember the good times, but what worked better for me was to focus on all the ways that the relationship was bad, and developing the strength that enabled me to dodge this bullet.
