A post I made on Instagram about always being in love with the singers in my fav bands has triggered a bit of a self enquiry session into my historically intense fangirlness.
Trying to remember the sequence - when did having an obsessional fangirl crush over take actual reality with a real person, because it did & it affected I think 3 big relationships I have had - I do consider the fact that this semi conscious activity of having a huge crush on a celebrity had its place in helping me to cope with some pretty harsh realities but as BPD/Bipolar sufferer I do genuinely loose touch with reality scarily easily.
I had a kind of moderate level crush on a young David Bowie which I used to cope with splitting up with the father of my 2 kids - I used it as a kind of fantasy thing to bounce the pain, to soften it. It was quite minimal that one. But as it was the first one I thought i'd include it. (many other earlier musical crushes but they were not entangled with real relationships)
I developed an enormous crush on a lead singer of a band I loved, really early on in my next relationship with a really fantastic, beautiful & kind, creative guy - I was 25, him a little younger - he took me on with 2 very small kids (and my undiagnosed severe mental illness).
I know that I was just using that crush to try to cope with the real relationship that was so savagely pressing all my BPD buttons: paranoia, jealousy, rage attacks, disassociation, binge drinking alcohol as coping strategy.
Under intense relationship & life stress I managed to make my secret fantasy actually brush with reality & although ‘nothing happened', it was not because I hadn’t wanted it to when I met that crush.
That relationship ended in the most severe tragedy level you can get to without one of us actually dying…… I never really was able to completely forgive myself for things I did……. nor was I ever able to give him some responsibility for some pretty awful abuse which happened.
Similarly during my next boyfriend - over 5 yrs on and off - I had an ongoing fantasy crush with REM's JMS that was pretty intense but stayed well in an occasional fantasy realm; smash glass for emergency use mainly - again it did serve me really well as some kind of refuge when that relationship broke down which was frequently. I used to talk to Michael really a lot when I was depressed for years, I remember. So helpful.
Next 4 yr relationship - I tried to go without a fantasy crush but felt the less for it - no refuge to go to when I felt lost or abandoned which was pretty persistently.
After being single a good few years I had a 2 yr on-off thing with a much younger guy, 20 yrs younger - which was incredibly incredibly difficult - BPD triggers get worse unless you know what’s happening & do active work on them with coping stategies & a therapist etc.
Prior to this i'd had a big big fangirl crush but I had let it go for reasons……..I used my imaginary friendship with that ex-crush to cope with this essentially impossible real relationship - I can’t explain it better that that - full on huh? ;)
So yes its been a helluva long time relying on imaginary friends to get my emotional needs met.
Im loath to make it wrong entirely though - so long as I can keep a foot in reality - its such a relief - imagining having a love relationship that actually works, that acts as a refuge for both people, where problems can get healed rather that resulting in emotional Dresden scenarios…...where great sex doesn’t cost my entire sense of self…… where I can hear opinions I don’t agree with without feeling like ive left the spaceship connected only by a tube.
Anyway, where am I now...... who knows..... but im not in love with all my bands like I was, im not the same as I was pre-menopause or pre-diagnosis. As I keep saying, in mental health 'INSIGHT IS ALL'. Which is despicably completely mysterious until you actually have some.
Oh damn, by way of association that brings me to Hypersexuality - both Bipolar & BPD have extreme libido issues..... that's another blog post entirely - I know, I know its related to this one - I will link them if I ever do write that one! You will most likely know what im talking about if you are a BPD/Bipolar sufferer.
Oh my this will need some editing… wtv
Sorry if its a little stream of consciousness but hey its a blog not a thesis - thx for reading
