For those that Love Us... Thank you always

Reaching out to those that are bipolar or that love and/or care for someone that is, I open my mind and my heart today. While shopping with my family a few days ago, I was taken back a bit by the realization that I truly am "high Maintenance." But this isn't about those that suffer from this disorder today. This is about those that love us. The ones that deal with our ways every single day.
I watch my family while we are in the store and they watch me closely. I sometimes wander through the store and then find myself standing... staring at whatever happened to catch my attention. I wait patiently, time meaning very little to me at that moment, for someone know to come along and touch my hand. At that point, I am free to roam once again. It isn't as if I can not go into a store alone. I can do that and as long as the crowd doesn't get too rude or over-whelming, I am good to go. It is simply that my mind wanders sometimes and I find myself extremely anxietic. Life for me and most bipolars is that way anyways. Even on my good days, the world is disconnected from me and my thoughts. The wrong time, the wrong place... the wrong anything for me, leaves me unable to accept the way the world is today.
Shards of yesterday and yester-year fill my mind and I find myself some-where between reality and what is real only to me. Those that love me and care for me can see these things and reach out and touch me, bringing me back to a world that isn't truly compatible with me. Our loved ones never know which "flag" is up. Is it ok to touch me? Is it alright to bring up certain subjects? Will her kisses make me slip back into reality or will they take my mind far away to where I fear that I am unable to bring myself to a place of comfort. Will a spoken word set me off on some wild moment of jerking and clicking and talking to "myself?"
Our loved ones have little choice but to live in our world a lot of the time they are near us. We ourselves easily slip into a mode of happy or not happy. We can leave the world that we fear and go away to a place that our loved ones are unable to touch us in. We can shift from happy to sad and back again and never think about it. We can be extremely excited about nothing at all and in a single instant, we are sad beyond anyones imagination. Nothing out of the ordinary for us but the ones that love us are left to deal with those roller coaster rides and somehow be there to pick us up when we fall out of the roller coaster car. They try to minimize the damages and sort out whether we are approachable at the time or not. We could write a book titled "how to go from sane to psycho and back in 30 seconds.
I wonder... do you tell the one you call safety Thank you now and then for all they endure? It isn't simply day to day emotions or ideas of grandeur that they must deal with. It isn't just the fears that We have they must try and calm or understand. It is living with the knowledge that the very person they love, the one they worry about and walk with and try to hold when ever they can that they must deal with. It is living with the knowledge, though not necessarily the understanding, that this person they love so deeply could wake up one morning and say "I don't want this any more. I am leaving." The knowing that every single day is both brand new and a carry over from the day before and the day before that and as far back as the issues may be. They endure and love us anyways.
Living with a bipolar person is not something everyone can do. those that stay with us through it all are precious and blessings. Take the time to thank them now and then. Let them know that you DO know all they must endure to be with you. And please, trust me on this one. They Do love you... They Must. Other-wise, they would not bear the brunt of where our minds take us. They would simply go away from us.