If you’ve read my entire blog, you should know what happened last year. I wrote about it in my YASaves post. For those of you who don’t remember, just got here, and/or are too lazy to go and read that, let me explain.
…No, that will take too long. Let me sum up:
Depression runs in my family. It’s a genetic thing. In addition to the unfortunately high risk for depression that I was born with, when I was ten, something traumatic happened (I’m not going to get into that just now; it deserves a post of its own.). Not a year later, I was tossed into the maelstrom that is sixth grade with no prior experience dealing with my so-called peers, and that was hellish. Things got better through junior high, and, when I started high school, I thought things were going to be okay. They weren’t. Through fuckwittery, bullshit, lying, and way too much estrogen for anyone’s good, I was deeply wounded and lost almost all my friends. More than a year later, my mom finally managed to wrestle her head out of her ass and I was hospitalized for self-injury.
I’m proud to say that in I have been safe for one year, three months, and twenty-three days. Life is still hard, and things still hurt, yet I’ve not once slipped on the long road to recovery.
Today, though, I almost did.
Tomorrow, it will have been one year since Elisabeth Sladen left us forever. This morning, my Psych teacher played a very sad documentary called Boy, Interrupted, the true story of a boy with bipolar disorder who committed suicide at fifteen. My mom has been cracking down hard on me. I don’t know whether or not I’m going to get a job up at my college over the summer, and it’s starting to stress me out.
All these elements combined to make a really shitty day.
I got the frightening, sickening empty feeling that has a long history of leading to doing things I later regret. It is an emptiness so fierce and intense that it aches. It physically hurts, and it is one of the few pains that I cannot bear.
As I left my school’s library, where I spend my study halls, to go to my last class of the day, I was in the worst state I had been in for months. I walked along the hallway, and met a very close friend of mine, as always happens. Like usual, he gave me a hug—the kid has to be the most physically affectionate guy I’ve ever met. I meet him on the opposite end of the school from my class, and I have to wade through freshmen to get to where I need to go, so I normally keep that particular hallway encounter relatively short. Today, I let myself cling. My friend realized something was wrong, so he set his books down and embraced me fully.
Just a moment of his affection, the reminder of his love for me, was enough to make the emptiness inside me go away. Letting my friend hold me up, just for one moment, gave me the strength to get keep going. I made it through the school day. I worked on the set for my school’s play. I walked home. I’m still safe.
There are some times when I look at my friends, with all their idiocy and problems and the necessity for me to be the adult, even when I’m the youngest, and I wonder why I bother. I wonder how much easier it would be if I didn’t have to deal with their hangovers and family troubles and school absences and dropping grades and the knowledge that I can fix at least some of these things and the worry about the ones I can’t fix. Then I have days like today, when I’m feeling broken and lost, and all it takes is a hug from a friend to feel better.
Maybe they can’t help me as much as I can help them, but the help they can give is damn important.
And that’s what friends are for.
