11/5/2010

I spoke with you briefly last night. You said you would call again, but you didn't. I dearly hope this is because you feel into a deep sleep that relaxed your psyche.

You are sick, I am almost certain. You have a chemical/clinical depression that may get better on its own, in time. Or it might drive you over the edge, into dropping out of college and hiding in your parents' house. If you see a therapist, if they can maybe prescribe you something to alleviate the power of the chemicals in your system so you can have a clear head and balanced emotions, it could be better in as little as a week. That doesn't discount the effect of actual therapy, which you need to manage these flarings, but it does take away the variable that drives you to depression once the sun sets.

I am glad that we both have Clio in all this, because it is difficult to stand by and watch the person you love most in the world being crippled by depression.

I don't know if you are actually being faithful to me, at least on an emotional level. I think this because I have been like that, offering less than totally innocent affection under the auspices of being cuddly, when I was really just looking for outlets. I know that Emily (much as I hate to make the comparison), pulled away and had her breakdown but did not leave until she had another person to jump to. You hang out well into the night with people I don't know. I may be projecting or basing my expectations of your reactions on how Emily behaved, but I am reminded of your urge for wanderlust, how you said you wanted to sleep around because you felt that is what college girls did. I am reminded that you never put your foot down when someone hits on you until your friendship with them is ruined.

I wish I could call Jenna and scream at her. I hate that you are standing by her, catering to her drama. She is not a real friend, I never thought she would be. She is a trifle. Yet, even after she confessed how she felt to you (as though you didn't know), you persisted in cuddling with her and making movie dates. When she confessed is when you should have pulled away because it is horribly offensive that she based your friendship on trying to fuck you. Anyone who did that with me would no longer be within my stable of friends. But I understand that she is new, that is seemed like you were going to have this group of friends. I notice that our relationship declined the more you spent time with them, though correlation is not causation. They represented a different life for you. I wish you believed me when I say that I have been there. You are in no place to deal with their crap right now, but Jenna doesn't care and your shared friends clearly take her side. I wish you could distance yourself from such toxic people (Nick springs to mind as well) before the situation became so dire.

I wish you were as mature as you think you are in your better moments, that we could begin to conduct the adult relationship together that you have promised me you wanted.

I am not your teddy bear and I won't let you treat me as such. I am your lover and partner and I wish you would again see me that way. I don't want to be a symbol in your life, I want to be in your life. I am willing to give you your space, but I need to know what you mean, what you need. I have dealt with too many depressed/suicidal people to believe every word you say now. What you say you want does not necessarily match up with what you genuinely need. And, yes, I want to be something you need.

I appreciate that you are holding off on making a decision about me, knowing that how you feel does not match up with your greatest truth. This limbo is painful, but not as much as never again having you in my life would be. Love isn't always simple and it certainly can be painful. I will continue to try to be there for you to the extent I can be. I will try not to let myself be pushed away by your illness. I will accept that I am not the problem here, but that your reactions to me are symptomatic. I will try not to lose my joy to your agony. I will try not to lose hours of sleep a night over my fears about you. I wish I had a support group or at least someone I respected who had gone through this and come out on the other end with their partner back.

I've thought about leaving you, to beat you to the punch, to end the relationship on my terms, to stop from the daily ache in one amputation. But not being with you is the furthest thing I could want. Our relationship has been the most nourishing connection I have ever encountered. You were so unlikely, but we worked so well for so long. Abandoning you now, when you honestly need me the most, would be treacherous and would seem to invalidate how much I have loved you. I want to keep loving you. My stance, though a bit more hesitant and reserved, is unchanged. I want to be your partner for the rest of our lives, even though you cannot handle tomorrows. I wish we could sit down and have a civil conversation without your chemicals getting in the way, to say all that needs to be said.

I am reminded of Melissa, which you will find unfortunate but inevitable. My decision with her was that her illness was different than who she was and had been. If I thought that Melissa was behaving this way, I would have been aghast and I could not have stood by her so long. Hoping that it was just a mental illness that could be managed allowed me to still care for her and try to do what is best for her, the best way I knew how. She still isn't totally better and is dealing with the repercussions of her illness, but she is much closer to the Melissa I knew before. I do not want you to ever feel so alone in your sickness that you lose things you care about. I don't want to lose you or be lost to you.

I know you are in this mire and will stay there for a little while. I need to stop diving in after you. I can't wear muck daily, but I will be here for you, I will pull you out. And, when you ask or I am certain you need it, I will wade in after you. But I can't spend my life there, even as I am willing to spend it at the edge, looking at you with pitying eyes.

Right now, caffeine is doing a good job of keeping me lucid and a little cheerful. I think I perhaps didn't sleep much last night.

I want you. I want my Melanie back and she is in there, aching to return to my arms. She is in so much pain and I'm told her leave her to it. Clio says to give you space and time and I try, but I need things defined.

My fear-based animal response to all this is to run. After you, away from you. Just to run to have a momentum, because I feel as though all I do is stand at the edge and beg you with my eyes to tell me you still love me enough to find your way out of the muck of your depression.

I almost wish I didn't understand just how hard this is for you, having been through variations. Then I could be angry with you, instead of pitying. I think you would almost prefer anger at this point, but I can't hold it (especially now that I am free of St. John's Wort). I am wounded and scared, but I am not angry and I am trusting that you won't do anything that will result in anger.

I do know from personal experience that, if the situation were reversed, you would go to inhuman lengths to help me. You would not let my depression chase you away and I have to do the same now.

We are not having issues because anything changed between us, except for the better (as odd as that is). We are having issues because you are genuinely depressed. Our issues are symptomatic, not causal.

She talks about how she wishes she could spare me this whole painful process, just reveal to me the end decision and either leave me forever or commit to a potentially long relationship. But she doesn't know. She's conflicted and so I have to sit here through this whole muddling process where she decides if she is going to leave me forever. And I tried to make it clear to her that, short of sleeping with other people, there is really nothing that she cannot do with me. I've never been one to restrict her from adventures.

I don't want Melanie to pull away from me because that is what Emily did to me, making it easier for both of us to establish separate lives, so she could move on with less guilt. I don't mind her taking space to herself, as long as she doesn't use this distance to line up the perfect shot. I don't want her to convince herself that we did not love each other as much as we do.

I hate that, right now, everything is still about her. That my phone buzzes and I think that maybe she has relented, maybe she has thought better of not speaking. But that's not how this works. And I just don't know if I should just end it now and try to get on with my life. I do know that I want her in my life and that my life would be infinitely poorer without her and that, without her, I will be broken. There are moments that are better than others. Until this point, I had been assuming that things would be okay. That, once we traversed this, we would be like we were or better, because she did say she wanted an adult relationship. She is just getting sicker and she is not getting the help she needs. I don't want a life without her.

I acknowledge that I am clingy and that I want things between us to be a certain way. I am not getting my needs met right now and I have to play these tentative games with her. I can't say to her half that I want to, because she cannot deal with my problems in conjunction with hers now. This has to be about her problems. And I told her I am sticking around because I see a hope for us despite everything against us. And I think she sees, whether it is clarity or mania, the same hope for us as well.

Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled and gifted. He is capable of crossing one eye, raising one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings. He likes when you comment.