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Monday, June 9, 2008

I hate his tattoos

DH's nurse practitioner, the one who prescribes his meds, told him that many bipolar people, when their illness is not well controlled, get tattoos on their forearm(s). She wasn't very clear as to why that is, but she seemed to think that the fact that DH has tattoos on his forearms is suggestive of him having bipolar.

And you know, DH has always had only two tattoos. One on each shoulder, both of them very meaningful to him. And he always said that he would never get a tattoo on his forearm. He used to say that a person loses respect when they do that, and they're hard to hide if you need to.

So as usual, it was a shock when, on one of his self-medicating sprees, he opted to have a tattoo of a bloody wound put onto his arm, "to signify the wounds that never heal".

He also got one on his other forearm that says "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash". One day he saw that on a sign and he thought it was so funny he'd get a tattoo of it. Only it's only funny in a shop, not on a person's arm. Sigh. And the checks that he wrote for those tattoos bounced, too.

And you know what? Those stupid tattoos never heal either. They're a sordid reminder of the worst time in our marriage. DH (now that he's more stable) hates them, I hate them. And the only meaning they have is lost somewhere in his bipolar brain, and in real life, you can't even tell what they are. Just a bunch of jagged red. And a saying that isn't even funny. I hate them. Have I mentioned that?

A lot of the things that he did can be fixed or forgotten, but those tattoos are there to stay. Kind of like the bipolar itself.

2 comments:

perphila said...

When you win the lottery he can have them lasered off right? :)

Wendy said...

Ouch! Not fun. Seems like wherever you look, somebody is dealing with something - really, really hard.
I found you at JeanMac's blog (A Mountain Too High).
My sister is bipolar and at least I don't have to live with her. I just hang up the phone when she starts her "I'm broke, nobody loves me" stuff.
It's still hard, though. I feel guilty and yet the next thing she'll do is tell us (my brother and me - we're the only ones that still talk to her) to f**k-off. Even if my brother has paid her rent - once again.
Sigh.....
God bless you, Carol and hang in there!