How the Darkness Spreads

I’ve written a few posts now about how depression effects me but I thought this time I’d write how it affects the people around me. I kept to my word, next time Henrik came online I brought a few things up and the events that followed really highlighted how hard this condition can be to other people.

It turned out, the email I sent those many months ago explaining why I thought it would be best to cut contact for a while, the email I exposed myself and everything I was feeling, the email I had worried about every day since I sent it, he didn’t read. His explanation was, and I’ll quote:

“I meant to, but I had sort of this walls are coming down on me, felt cramped, like shit piled up on me, so I never did. Are you mad at me now? I mean, it sounds pretty egotistic, but I just didn’t have the energy to focus on anything but what I was doing just there and then.”

It hit me then, the amount of emails I had sent him in the past when I was at my lowest, the amount of times he had listened whilst I vented out and cried, the amount of times he talked me out of taking the pills that were beside me. This isn’t easy to deal with, he never asked for it, it had to reach breaking point at some point. What makes it harder is the fact we are so far away from each other. He has told me in the past that the thing he finds hardest about all this is the fact he can’t just take it away, he can’t even be in the same country as me let alone the same room.

He has been going through a very rough time himself and no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t blame him for not reading the email, the ones he has had in the past have been hard to read to put it lightly. This condition doesn’t just emotionally drain you, it drains the people who have to see it too. They worry, they get upset, in some ways it becomes contagious.

I was pretty sure before that I would carry on hiding my depression, despite how much I know it doesn’t help me, and this has just confirmed to me why I should. I don’t want people to worry, to get upset, to share this burden, I can’t do it to them. What scares me now is that as Henrik and I’s conversation went on it became increasingly clear that with everything going on in his own life right now I can’t rely solely on him to get me out, it’s become too much. This means that either I find another person to share this with or I try and deal with it on my own and no matter how much my head screams at me not to, I know deep down that it’ll be the latter option I go for.