No One

One of the many problems with long-term depression is that it doesn't stop. There's no three-month period where you're sunshine and roses, and everyone can just enjoy your company and forget the depression ever existed. It's constant, and that makes it extremely difficult to find anyone to talk to when you desperately need to talk.

Everyone has problems. Everyone has bills they need to pay, everyone has things they need to do and not enough time to do them. Everyone has people who need things from them, and that's not a complaint, it's a fact of life. People have problems.

I can't ask my friends and family to put their problems aside and listen to my unfounded worries (or my completely legitimate worries) every time I have a stress attack. They know I'm stressed. They know I'm broke, that I hate myself so much sometimes that I can hardly stand to take another breath, and there's really nothing they can do about it. They can't take care of me.

I should be able to take care of myself, anyway. I should. But for some reason, I can't deal with stress the way "normal" people can. I can go take a shower, try to read a book, snuggle under some blankets, eat comfort food, tell myself repeatedly that someone loves me, and the entire time I'm still on the verge of breaking down.

Does it really matter if someone loves me? Not really. In the face of crippling depression, logically knowing that someone loves me doesn't help. If I die, they'll be miserable for a while, but they'll go on, because that's what people do. When I'm in heaven or hell or purgatory or limbo or being reborn as a dung beetle, is it really going to bother me that a handful of mortals on planet Earth will be left mourning? Probably not. They'll comfort each other, assure each other that they'll see their loved ones in heaven.

No matter how many times I try to convince myself that I've made a positive difference in someone's life, or that I might in the future, I still feel empty and useless. There's nothing I can do that no one else in the world could do. If I don't do it, someone will fill my place.

No happy ending this time. That's life; suck it up.