So the love of my life doesn’t want to be the love of my life. I knew this was coming before we even got started.
He’s an alcoholic. He’s depressed. He’s suicidal. He hates this life, his life. He loves me but doesn’t want me to love him. He doesn’t want to be important to me. I guess that way he can slope off to die quietly, and without my knowledge.
He pursued me knowing all the while he shouldn’t. He isn’t capable right now (maybe he never will be) of functioning well enough to support himself, let alone in relationships. I let him in, again, and hoped for a better outcome this time even whilst having this nagging feeling that we’d just end up disappointed.
Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.
So said him to me a year ago when I expressed doubts – and he was stone cold sober.
I want to shake him…
Shake him out of his depression, free him from his prison and drag his sorry arse into the light.
I have suffered from depression and sometimes it returns – everybody has been there and goes back again in their lifetime, to highly varied degrees. It is not the same experience for everyone. You can’t be talked out of it amongst friends, you can’t be drugged out of it. I talked to my GP and that was the extent of the professional help I got; the rest of the heavy lifting I did alone for the most part. I have sought solace in a few drinks to numb the pain over the years and I still do, but not to the extremes that he does. I have felt suicidal several times and in fact just a few months ago. I survived a life threatening operation to return to a life that continues to hit me. But that is life. It isn’t pretty most of the time, it can be bloody boring too much of the time but there are bright spots and I seek them out.
He sought me out: “…the only and one bright thing in (his) life…”.
He said: “…I need you in my life…”.
But here I am, covered up again, filed away under what exactly…?
Am I an idiot? Don’t think so. I didn’t fall for a line/s, my eyes were wide open, he wanted to marry me and I knew within a few short weeks that it would never happen. He lacks the courage and will and force to make a change that will benefit him and those around him. It is easier to hide behind your pain than to get out in front of it. To do that takes effort, it is a monumental shift in the brain that sadly, some never rise to. I want him to rise, and he simply cannot. I’ve been there and fought through. It took me such a long time… But all my experience comes to naught here. The arrows miss their target, the seeds lack fertile ground…
I hope he reads this, I hope against hope that it breaks through. I want my friend to be well but I can’t tell him that in a text or email and he is avoiding a face to face. I get it. The last thing you want when you feel like this is to be told there’s a better way. And yet he has said he didn’t want me to stop trying. The man is a walking, talking contradiction in terms: “Don’t wait for me, move on, I’d hate that you did but you should, I love you, I need you, I have no right to want you for myself or feel jealousy, I love hearing from you and then I don’t, I want to hear from you, be with you but I can’t handle how you or I feel.”.
I don’t want to be your all and all…
What a mind fuck, you say – except it isn’t because I was prepared. The defences were much better this time around.
Dark soul that he is, messed up as he is, he is and always will be one of my bright spots. We shall, I hope, maintain a friendship but that is up to him. He has hidden behind texts and has not seen me in months, yet a year ago we were in one another’s pockets. I do not apportion any blame. He is a sick man who needs professional help and isn’t seeking it beyond drugs that utterly fail to control the extreme low cycles he experiences. He is barely clinging to life and it is a crying shame as he has much to give. The state of his mind does not allow him to see this or believe it. He is locked in a prison largely of his own making and the depression makes that worse, a condition he simply cannot control without help and support.
So what do I do?
What I’ve always done with anyone I love and care for: be a friend, watch, wait. I’d like to see him but he probably can’t handle it. As his friend, I am involved and care for him like really true friends do. The fact that I do love him more than a friend is secondary. All along I made it clear that if he couldn’t handle “us”, our friendship mattered more to me and I was not willing to lose it again. He agreed but I do wonder if my greatest kindness to him would be to disappear for a while with little or no contact. Hard to know what to do for the best really… I must just keep working on loving him less but enough to keep us both sane and stay friends. We don’t do so well apart and the friendship is important to us both.
I sent him this poem today. I came across it earlier in the week and it’s by Adam Lindsay Gordon:
Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone:
Kindness in another’s trouble;
Courage in your own.
He didn’t respond and I didn’t expect he would. We all have troubles and heaven knows I have mine. I was struggling with something yesterday. I wanted to put the past few weeks behind me for so many reasons and meet up, shoot the breeze, not talk about problems. He couldn’t meet up but when he texted me later and at the end of it, said that he didn’t want to be important to me (after I had said how much he mattered not just to me but because he is so intelligent, etc), he knew I was not in a great place. Timing is everything. It’s never going to be a good time to be negative but it didn’t exactly brighten my mood. That’s not his problem though and it’s not as if I wasn’t expecting it. Still, it wasn’t fair was it. I only said it (again) because he told me 2 weeks ago quite out of the blue that he came close to ending his life. I have no idea what stopped him and he typically didn’t elaborate. All I can say is that I knew it was coming because I know him and his family didn’t and still don’t have a clue. He won’t tell them.
He has so much to say and is so intelligent which only makes his illness all the more frustrating because it blocks him. I almost always get a lift when I hear from him and there is a word that I came across a few months ago: Sapiosexual. I am a sapiosexual person – the mind is more attractive to me, than the physical. A much younger man has shown an interest but I find myself having to explain the simplest of words/phrases and I feel like an English teacher! I want conversations to flow, not to stop every 10 minutes to explain the vernacular. He isn’t available and although he might be in future I just can’t see myself as anything but a good friend. We have a giggle, there’s great chemistry and he’s lovely but that’s it. I have a best friend just like him. If I could feel more that would be great as he ticks most of the boxes, but I just don’t – and it is not because my heart is elsewhere. Head and heart need to be engaged: the physical tale is told in the first kiss, which seals or breaks the union.
Ah life… I shall plod on with my projects, fun and not so fun, keep up with my growing circle of friends and not expect anything to happen in the realm of the heart.
Perhaps I shall be taken by surprise.
We live in hope…
Drops of Sanity 