Tag Archives: Depression

by

Stay (on Loving Someone with Depression)

I’m back at home now, and I was talking to a few friends of mine. One of them has a person. Let’s call her JumbledTogether.  Now, she and I are relatively new friends – in school I think we were just too busy to become close. The past few years though, we’ve begun to share ourselves.  She has an incredible head on her shoulders, and I all I want is for her to be happy.

This person of hers is struggling with this disease of mine.  This disease that so many wonderful, beautiful people fight on a daily basis.  I am so incredibly excited and happy that she has found someone who she thinks she’ll spend the rest of her life with. But she’s not happy.  Because he’s not happy.  There are three of us standing outside, and she’s tearing up, telling us what’s happening to her beautiful dream. To her person.  As we’re talking about how people deal with depression, I realized something for the first time, even though on the surface I’ve known it forever –

Depression doesn’t just pick a victim, it picks the victim’s family and their friends.  This is what I’ve always known – of the 8 people living in my house, at any given time at least 3 of us are trying to battle ourselves on a rotating schedule.  But what I’d never really realized, or maybe what I never really wanted to realize, is that because I know we’re not alone in our suffering, I can’t keep people in my life.   I have always known I’m no good at relationships.  I sabotage them before they go too far.

And so we’re standing there, and I’m trying to explain to her what her person is going through, and she just keeps asking what she can do, and if it will work.  I have nothing to say – I can’t tell her what will work, because it hasn’t worked for me. I can tell her that of all the couples I know, only one of them has ever made it.

I’ve spent my entire childhood watching them. observing.  I’ve come to the conclusion that what makes it work is acceptance.
So that’s what I tell her –
That somedays he’s not going to want to leave the house.  No matter how much it means to you.  You’re going to show up to things alone even when you RSVP’d for 2.  That’s the way it is with us.  Remember that he’s trying his best, but even when he’s trying his best he’s going to have bad days.  He’s not always going to talk about it.  He’s going to push you away.  But if he’s your person, I don’t think that it matters.  We all have our things, and yes, somedays, we need you to push us, but there are other days when we need to sit in bed in the dark. Even though you may not understand exactly what we’re going through, you staying even when we tell you not to, even when we tell you that we need some time off, or that we’re not together, or that we can’t handle a relationship right now, or that we can’t be there for you, is what will hold us together some days. When we look at you, and need your help, but can’t ask for it, help us anyway.   Help us take the world on day by day.  Sometimes, it’ll be hour by hour.  On the worst days, it’ll be minute by minute.  Just stay. Stay with us, learn to accept our disease, and learn to be happy without us.  This is the most important part.  Find a support system that isn’t just us, because there are going to be days when we’re not there for ourselves, let alone for some one else, even when you need us to be.  There may even be a day when we’re not there at all.  So cherish the time we’ve got.  Know that no matter what happens to us, nothing is your fault.  It’s the way we’re wired.

If you happen to have luck like JumbledTogether, and you do fall in love with someone who’s sick like me.  Well, good luck*.

Disclaimer – not all depressions are the same. Some do go away, some are environmentally triggered. So if you are living/do love someone who is struggling, urge them to get help.  Sometimes, it does work.

by

Damaged Beauty

4am
phone is ringing
I feel the pain before I see it
she’s got her disease
dripping from her eyes
and I’m nothing more
distraction
but I get it.

more than we can say
of the men who warm our beds
we know.
and she’s talking of pills
running home
back to the only thing that can calm a restless angel
oh hearts like ours
intertwined
around 18 years of broken pieces

she’s so damn perfect
her tears are falling
begging me to come home
women like us
can’t help but break
and once we start

my heart is racing
does she know?
I’ve got nobody else
but I’d understand
if she can’t do it any more.

I can’t do anything
from this far away
she knows everything I’ve said.
all the pieces of glass
I’ve picked up and glued back together
time and time
again.

we’re shattering
in complete solidarity
in our loneliness
and this fucking disease
insanely mesmerizing
another night another bottle,
another morning
please,
just stay
for one more morning.

by

LittleMissIndependent

I must have been about ten the first time I realized independence was a necessity.  I had been crying to my mother about something or another.  I did a lot of that in those days – I was disturbed even at a young age, a symptom of preadolescent depression.  I was screaming at no one in particular.  I looked at my mother, “DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!?!?!”  My poor mother had no idea what to say to her oldest and most difficult child.  Finally she sighed, “No. I don’t get it.  But I do love you.”  Tonight after a long, emotional, drawn out conversation with my parents, that evening came back to me. A decade later, they still don’t understand. But they say they love me still.
I think that evening must have been a pivotal one in the history of my life.  Her words cut me.  I sought, and still seek, my mother’s approval, a side effect of being one parent’s favorite but not the other’s.  She didn’t think I needed her as much as the little ones, what with this independence I had.  She worked a lot of night shifts.  It was around that time I must have accepted that I’d be misunderstood, because I stopped explaining.  I stopped sharing.  I learned how to deal with the curve balls life threw at me.  I dealt with my disease on my own. I never told my family.  I had beautiful friends who kept me from jumping off the edge. The things my parents never knew…  I had a rough time.
If only she had known what was coming. Of her four children, at least three of us have long battled symptoms of depression.  I myself still tend to silently eat my issues, and I’ve worked hard to overcome my own addictive tendencies.  My brother hasn’t had quite as much luck, and our mother loves us no matter what.  My sister’s depression, at it’s worst, manifested itself as an eating disorder.
My brother started getting bad just as I was getting better, Mama quit her job – it got her, too, and then it was my sister’s turn.  The two of them needed Mama most. I understood. I stepped aside.  I went off to university, and things were better for a while.
Suddenly, I had my mother back. As a friend, no less! I could not have been more thrilled.  My brother was still struggling.  Mama went back to work. I started my second year of university overseas.  My mother and I didn’t talk much, what with the time difference and her full time job and her full time son.  I came back. And every phone call was about someone else.  “Well, your friends never fought like hers do.” “How often did your classmates smoke weed?”  Our conversations were consumed with my siblings.  Eventually, she only rang when she had a problem.  Dad did the same. And now I’m back. And my sister is away at school.
But I’ve been on my own since I was ten.  My parents are sitting across the kitchen tables with questions about why am I so closed off, and why am I not trying harder to find a job? Why do I keep refusing help I haven’t asked for, what is wrong with me, why do I want to be by myself – I was never like this before?  On and on.  I can see the life they’re imagining for me in the reflection, and the stares filled with pity.  NOW THEY’RE WORRIED?! NOW THEY CARE?  Now, when I’ve finally got myself together and really don’t want their interference?  Oh, the irony!  I want to tell them that they’re not allowed to worry.  That they sound paranoid.  That they’re cutting me down again because they have no trust and no faith in me, and they’re not the ones I should have to prove wrong, anyway! They’re not listening.  I’m trying to explain without offending that I don’t do hugs, and that, quite frankly, they’ve missed out on 10 years of me, and that I’m not who I used to be.  That change is good and relevant, and important.  And I’ve only ever felt this misunderstood once before.  And the way they’re looking at me is why I keep hopes and dreams to myself.  How can they just dump the bucket all at once? A younger me would have been angry.  Angry because they don’t take me seriously, don’t respect me as an adult, don’t trust me to make my mistakes.  But I’m just tired and crying and glad for my secrets, filled with belief in myself, and laughing at how we got this way.