Depression has an itinerate, homeless quality to it. Not the truly destitute homeless, though depression/mental illness and homelessness intertwine, but for the purposes of this comparison, consider the newly or traveling homeless – when you have friends and family to call upon – when you can still consider it “crashing” at someone else’s. You rely on select friends to keep you alive by listening to you, coaching you, hugging you, loving with you, and feeding you emotionally. You are supported by the grace of the friend who hosts you. So you balance your weighty and devouring need against the knowledge that at some point, no matter how much they love you, there comes a time when you be the irritating roommate they regret inviting into their home, and you must move on. If you have the dignity and strength, you will depart before you have outstayed your welcome. If you are shameless and hopeless, you will drop on your knees and plead mercy, overstaying your welcome entirely. Neither is preferable. The former entails feeling completely alone, because to save them, you pretend like all is perfectly well as you leave. But when you close the door behind you, you have closed an entirely different door. Your friend no longer knows your despair. The latter may eek out a bit more time and your friend will admittedly know how low you are, but you will burn that love, and they will resent you for not being strong enough.
So you find yourself looking for a new shelter, and feeling completely worthless because you cannot provide it for yourself.
Ted, who overflows with wisdom, stressed that if the relationship with Sandy is to work out, then I should give him a chance to be the person I seek out multiple times a day for support, the person who houses you. By seeking that solace from others, I distance myself irrevocably from my spouse. I cannot describe the depth of my reluctance to ask or have Sandy to be that person. I emailed him, both asking if he would be and expressing my concern. I’ve included two excerpts.
When Ted suggested this…, my first thought was, no fucking way. I balk because I know you’re so busy every day. I feel quite certain it would frustrate you to get these periodic panic-filled or sorrowful texts or IMs in the middle of meetings or trying to get squeeze a tiny bit of work in. And realizing how much I cringe at the thought has me reviewing our emotional communication.
Somehow over the years, I have grown frightened at the thought of exposing myself to you emotionally. In so many scenarios I have run through my head, I anticipate that you will get frustrated, or you’ll be dismissive, or you’ll have disdain for what I feel or need. I don’t know why I feel this way. It feels to me like I have enough legitimate past evidence of these responses to warrant those predictions, but maybe it is self-sourced, a projection of some form.
His sympathetic (edited) response:
I’m happy to be that person, and to talk about what I can do to help. So I guess we should talk about what’s involved. It’s quite likely that I’ll be unable to respond immediately a majority of the time (like this – I started writing this note at like 11:30), which means I may not be good… regardless of the emotional connection. Even if response time isn’t a factor, I may lack the experience to match your darkness.
I suspect it was this response that made it easy to come back home. And once yesterday at work, I reached out and got a hug in response.
But yesterday I felt like I was on the street again. Whether by option one or option two above, I feel like I have exhausted the hospitality of the friends who had been supporting me. And though he wants to, I cannot bring myself to truly knock on Sandy’s door. In all my prior experiences, I am an insatiable, inescapable vortex of need. I suspect I never wanted to share this vacuum with Sandy because it inevitably results in either the depletion of the other person or the person pulling away to survive. I have never wanted either of those eventualities for Sandy.
I huddle up on the sidewalk.