I feel like for every step forward I take, I keep taking a few back.

My daughter pissed me off violently tonight. She broke something that I suppose meant enough to me to make me angry. I tried to breathe through it, put myself into time out, but I couldn't. I ended up smashing a glass on the floor in anger.

I haven't broken anything in so long. I feel like I botched my progress.

I have been having a lot of bad dreams about my husband being unfaithful to me lately. The interesting thing is, I don't believe he ever would be. I never really had these thoughts about him. Even when he was traveling all over the country, I never believed for a second that anything like that would occur. He loves me so much and we have the most outrageously happy marriage. But, in these dreams, he is still really in love with me, still fawning all over our marriage, but looking for women to escape me and my illness with. The first time I had this dream, he was fucking one of my friends from the seventh grade. Except she wasn't a child anymore. She was an adult. Strangely, I never knew this person as an adult...but I knew who she was immediately. Why I thought of her after so many years is strange. The next time, it was with some random woman, but it wasn't an infidelity, so much as we "hooked up" with a third person. This is something we've done before while we were dating, but never as a married couple. The ground rule was, no intercourse with another woman. And, it never happened that way. They never touched each other. Only me. Fine. But, in this dream...I asked him to fuck this girl. (Not the girl we did it with in real life, but some random made up figure). He refused, telling me that once he does that, there would be no going back. I insisted. I screamed at him and demanded that he do it "once and for all and get it over with". He complied, but cried through it. After that, I left him. I couldn't get over it.

This morning was the kicker.

I had a VERY vivid dream that I caught him with someone. Not in the act, but rather, through emails and phone calls. I confronted him. He denied. I freaked the fuck out, went wild on him...like I do during one of my manic episodes. He finally broke down and confessed. He told me her name was "Dani" of all things and that she used to work with him. He told me that she meant nothing to him and that the sex wasn't even close to what WE have together. He did say, however, that she was free of the complications of loving me has brought him. He told me that she was just easy (I don't mean that in a sexual way) and that around her, he could just relax.

Now, a few things occur to me.

There have been a lot of changes for me as of late and a lot of things going on around me that may relate to these insane dreams.

1. I have been under extraordinary stress as of late.
2. I recently severed ties with my mother and perhaps I am transposing that "loss" onto someone I love more than anything...my husband.
3. A good friend of mine recently found out her fiance cheated on her with some woman he met on MySpace. His reason? This woman was "easy to be with" compared to her. Maybe some of that crept into my mind.
4. I recently took a second job, online, at a site that promotes adult relationships of the sexual nature. Many of these people are cheating spouses looking for a hookup. I don't promote or condone it. I simply do the customer service for the website. However, it has made me incresingly aware of how many people are cheating out there. I think it might be affecting my dreams.
5. I have a life changing event coming up in 28 days and it is really fucking with my head.
6. I just started this new medication and it is truly possible that these strange dreams/nightmares are being caused by the increased dose of Lamictal. This is a side effect I have read about for some people.

So there. Six glorious reasons why I think my husband is fucking someone else in my dreams. He never tells me I'm crazy for thinking that. He just looks at me with those big, beautiful brown eyes and says, "never". Nothing else. Just "never".

I believe him, because I know I could never see it in my heart to do it either.

Before the medication and when my BPD was at its most severe, if you had a pulse, I fucked you. End of story. I wasn't straight. I wasn't gay. I was just plain greedy. I thought I was just promiscuous due to "lack of a father figure" (per my former therapist). Now I know it was the mania causing me to do risk taking behaviors. That makes me feel better and I am grateful to have survived the 80's unscathed.

For the most part.

The mental images of the things I did and the way I showed such little regard for myself will probably haunt me forever. I can't take them back. I can only forgive myself and understand that it took me 25 years to realize I was a very sick girl.

The grown up me is ready to embrace the stupid little girl and forgive her.