A letter to the best friend of someone with depression

It can’t be easy to be friends with us.

To have found your ‘person’, your most trusted and honest confidant and to always wonder and perhaps wait for the day we don’t answer your phone call, the door, your text.

To watch for those inexplicable moments when in mid-laugh the life begins to drain from our faces as the dark shadow of this illness called depression robs us of a genuine smile.

To know all of the acts and the tells that we have created to mask our pain from most of the world. To see through the facade of normalcy we wear to go about our adult days with all of the energy we can muster.

To be the place we turn when the mask and the facade shatter and we can’t run or hide from the intensity of emotions that we feel.

To feel what you must feel when you hear us say we don’t want to or aren’t worthy of living – and know that the impenetrable sadness of depression may block any words you say to prove our worth from getting through.

To search the darkest reaches of your emotions through life to try to understand how we feel – but never truly knowing.

To feel relieved that you don’t really understand but guilty that you’re relieved.

To watch us try and try again through therapy, medication after medication combination, meditation, mindfulness, positive self-talk and every other possible solution at our disposal to beat our depressed mind into the background so we can be happy or even just content.

To watch us blame ourselves when these solutions don’t work – even though you know we’re not to blame.

To watch us change for better and worse over the years as we balance the medications that keep many of us alive with the side effects that impact us greatly.

To been acutely aware that your words are being filtered through the distorted lens of depression and be fearful that a misstep in words can spiral us to an even worse place.

To want to help but feel absolutely helpless.

To the best friends of people with depression… you are our anchor in a safe harbour.

You think your words don’t get through often enough, but they do and if not understood today will be called upon in the toughest moments when you’re not around and we’re grasping to life.

You regularly achieve the impossible by knowing the smallest and silliest things that can make us smile even on the darkest days.

You listen over and over again to the same dysfunctional thought processes and lies that depression creates and you debunk each one with kindness and conviction.

You are fearful every day of the time we won’t text back, answer the door or pick up the phone but you don’t let your fear interfere with continuing to do so every possible moment you have.

You never make us feel guilty for not being able to rise above the depression and seamlessly adapt plans to make us feel comfortable and safe.

You know that even on our good days, the simplest of ‘I love yous’ help build our strength for the worst days.

You never ask why or doubt the depth of our sadness, you just believe its there.

You love us simply for who we are at any given moment of any given day.

And if one day we can’t be there anymore, know that you did everything and so much more but some of us just can’t be saved from this disease.

Know that regardless of the end of the story, you’ve made the journey to the end so much richer and brighter than it ever could have been without you.

Thank you will never be enough.