How To Dismiss Feelings

Posted on March 15, 2005 in Crosstalk Disappointment Partnership

My wife is my best friend. There’s no doubt in my mind about that. As I struggle with my disease, however, people remind me of that as if that fact alone were going to make me snap out of my state of mind. It’s a quiet, subdued way of saying “Just get over it. You have nothing to complain about.” But I do. I ache. And I don’t entirely know why. Except in this: I’ve spent years seeing just my wife and few others. I’m isolated, alone. I need other people in my life.

Here are a few of the excuses I have collected as to why various people can’t be my friend:

• You’re a guy and I’m a girl.
• I don’t know that I can fit it in my schedule.
• I’ll get around to it. I promise.
• I’m too depressed to talk to anyone right now.

Sound like the singles dating scene? I wasn’t good at that, either. Never cared much for bars, so I guess I never learned social skills. People tell me that I am likeable. They can’t understand why I can’t attract friends. Neither can I. So I come to a different conclusion. That there is something about me that just turns people off. And if I’m not evil, there’s no reason for condemning myself is there? It’s just how it is. So today, I am accepting that I am not the kind of fellow who people seek out as a friend. I shall continue to be kind towards the suffering as I have been. I’ll just not expect any reciprocation from anywhere except inside.

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Another take, jetting off from this fellow’s observations: no one understands people with mood disorders better than other people with mood disorders. We know what the ups and downs are like, what the crashes feel like. You’d think we’d be there when we saw another of our kind suffering, we’d check in. But in my experience, this doesn’t happen. We’re not, after all, in 12 Steps Programs. We’re mentally ill. So we say that we don’t have to be there for others.

That’s what makes it damned lonely to have a mood disorder, Gilgamesh. You can’t count on the people who understand the most.