[d]

I'll give it to 2013 - it really tried to take me down with it. This sounds like something out of a 12-year-old's diary, but, perhaps, 12-year-olds are more blatant & I'm attracted to blatancy. For the last few weeks I've had daily headaches & nausea. I believe I know why, but to believe in the reason, is actually frightening. I have come to a point where I'm all in, flat down. I consider myself someone unafraid of speaking up if something is bothering me, but know that it's hard for people to follow social rules they don't understand - or perhaps have never had to actualize before; all they can comprehend is their own pain, thus, they don't comply to other people's needs.

I have to convince my father that my depression is not a choice. He thinks it makes sense when he says, "I've been through harder things than you in life & I got over them." And, "He broke up with you twice, what more do you need to know that he doesn't love you?" I understand that these mean to be translated into, "I want you to be okay and happy." But, they're unsympathetic, unhelpful, and rile within me a defensiveness. It asks a lot of me - it asks me to defend my past, my relationship, my ex, my depression, myself. They think that this person is the cause of my depression for the same reason they think you can turn depression on or off: ignorance.

Before Christmas I received a letter from my ex reconfirming the reasons why we can't be together & that he's slept with other people. I sat in bed with the letter in my lap, wondering how it could happen that a partner of 5 years would treat me like this. I spent my holiday, ashamedly, trying to reason why a person would do this to another person. I believe this is the source of my nausea. I have just come to accepting the pain of this. I don't understand it fully yet, but every time my mind wants to go there, I fall short. There's this metaphysical blank space that I can only comprehend as a very literal representation of "the wall" that people build so as not to hurt any more.

This evening after a film with friends, everyone got to talking about the rules we develop & tend not to follow, then about how people stay in relationships out of convenience. I was told that perhaps he only stayed with me out of convenience, because how could we have gone 5 years without talking about marriage. My innate reaction was to go on the defense - to once again legitimize my relationship till its end, whether or not this is true for him, it's my truth & what I want to believe in, in order to continue believing that people are good. Also, as I try to conceptualize all of this, I remember that I was with a truly impulsive person & I have to believe that fundamentally, he could not live for too long in a phase of unease.

If I believe in circles & to give out what you hope to receive, then I am confused why when all I have given is all of me, all compassion, dedication, complete love, why is it then that I have earned on the other end a support group who are tired of my depression; have chosen a person who tortures me in loss & pokes at that loss like it's still his to develop upon. I don't know why people make rules about how you have to be single "to find yourself," that you need to sleep around in order to truly know; that a relationship without talk of marriage is doomed; that depression is a choice. I'm in this constant loop of transferring something demeaning & refashioning it into what a person might mean or should mean. I am not good at that in-one-ear-out-the-other. I have a large capacity for handling shit, but am sensitive. All I can hope for is that through my experience, my family & friends will better understand mental health. And what can I take from this great hole, of losing someone I really love - besides all that bullshit about "lessons learned" people use to make sense of pain, I have no idea. I guess, I just hope this person realizes what he gave up & that both of us can live with it.

I needed to make sense of these things. My suggestion is, you don't have to accept what other people offer, and if you find yourself constantly wondering, Is it me, or are these people crazy? It's okay to admit that it's them.