“You know, you can only actually help someone who wants to be helped.” – Jojo Moyes
My first experience with dating and depression was when I found myself dating an old high school friend while I was battling depression. I was not aware that this was what I was going through at the time, but looking back at it now I was smack dab in the middle of what turned out to be a 10 year fight I didn’t know I was fighting.
Large portions of that time and that relationship are gone from my memory, and the ones that remain are jumbled and confusing. I know we connected again through facebook, that he was living out of town at the time, and that he was the one who made all the effort to try and make things work. I don’t think it lasted very long, or that we saw each other very often, and I can’t remember what words or feelings we exchanged. I know I hurt him badly because he won’t speak to me now, but I can’t remember how or why.
Depression, in all of its forms, is a mood disorder that affects the ability to function in day-to-day life. For many this includes feeling empty, hopeless, or numb; feeling restless, irritable, or anxious; thoughts of death or suicide; having low self esteem or feelings of guilt and worthlessness. For others it can mean difficulty concentrating or making decisions, low energy, changes in appetite or weight, headaches, sexual dysfunction, aches and pains, digestive problems, and unusual sleep patterns. It can result in agitation, irritability, an increased use of drugs or alcohol, self destructive behaviour, isolation, loss of control, and uncontrolled rage.
My depression lasted a long time because I wouldn’t acknowledge it, and if you won’t acknowledge something you can’t deal with it and get better. It wasn’t until I was in my early 30s that I started to see how much life I was missing out on living under this blanket of confusion and pain and fear. I’m sure there were people along the way who tried to help me, to talk about what I was going through, but I was so tightly wrapped up in it that ultimately I was the only one who could find my way out. So I reopened the old trauma wounds, explored all their dark and painful pockets, and did the work to clean them out enough that they could finally heal. The scars will always be there, and occasionally show in unexpected reactions or behaviour, but now shiny new skin has grown over them, and I can live and love as a whole person again.
Not everyone has a type of depression that can be “healed”. My depression came as a result of unresolved trauma and is commonly known as situational depression. Some people suffer from clinical depression, which can still be caused by trauma, but can also come from physical factors, genetics, or from disturbances in the levels of certain chemicals in the brain. Clinical depression can last for a long time, and can even be a lifelong diagnosis.
Several years ago I entered into a long term relationship with a man who masked his depression very well. So well that for a long time he was even able to mask how bad it was from himself. He was a writer, a performer, and he presented himself as a high energy, social, excited about life person. And at the beginning he was, because that was who he wanted to be. He knew he had lots of issues and trauma to deal with, and sometimes they would come out as bad days or short periods of isolation, but those were on the ‘one day’ list of things to work on, not something he wanted to or was ready to deal with now.
The longer they stayed on that list, the more they affected him. We were very much in love, but in the end that didn’t really matter, because love isn’t the answer to depression. Our relationship became about me giving, and him taking. Not because he wanted to take, but because he was so knotted up inside that it became impossible for him to free up anything to give, and taking was all that was left to keep us connected. Our life became about what he needed, what he wanted to do, and what he was capable of. Our relationship stopped moving forward, and I ran out of things to give. I started pushing for the things I wanted and needed, and eventually he ended things. There was simply no energy left for me when it was all being used to hold his demons at bay.
I took some time after that relationship to do some work on myself, so that I wouldn’t let another person put me through what I had just gone through, and so I could support the next person a little better. That was when I started to learn what was in my power to control, and what wasn’t. I went back to dating and kept picking the same guy I always had – the performer/musician/actor, or the funniest/loudest/most popular guy in the room. I have always been a sucker for charisma. But this time I recognized something common in all of them; they all had depression they weren’t dealing with. The charm and noise and show were all just very loud versions of masking, to hide from themselves and from the world all the shit they weren’t dealing with. This doesn’t stop me from wanting to be with them, or even from falling in love, but now I know enough to know what I can help with, what I can’t, what is because of me, and what has absolutely nothing to do with me, who I am, or how they feel about me.
4 years ago I began a relationship with a man who continues to amaze me by showing me what living with long term depression can actually look like. He received his clinical depression diagnosis over a decade before we met and will most likely live with it for the rest of his life. He doesn’t try to pretend it isn’t there, doesn’t blame the world because he has it, and doesn’t demand that others make accommodations for it. Instead he continues to test the limits of what he can do and handle within it, pushes those boundaries as far as he can and as often as he can, and acknowledges and asks for help when there is something he can’t handle. He quietly and persistently fights a battle every day that most people don’t even know is happening, and he does it with a graceful strength that I hope one day to achieve. He has taught me that it isn’t wanting to help that is important; it’s being there when a person is ready and able to ask for and accept help that is what’s needed. That lesson is a gift I will never be able to thank him enough for giving me.
I wish I could apologise to that friend from high school, that I could explain to him, with all of the knowledge I have now, what I was going through, why I couldn’t deal with it at the time, and why I wasn’t ready for the help he wanted to give. But that is not how life works. All I can do is forgive myself, forgive the people who have and will hurt me while on their own healing journeys, and hope that one day he might forgive me too.
Swipe Right on the Journey 