By Lawrence Gartshore.
Something that is becoming increasingly apparent to me is the fact that certain situations will not, as one continues to struggle with waves of mental illness, feel entirely okay. And that is, equally, entirely, okay.
I have written before about my own personal situation – the fact that I still harbour a great deal of guilt for the way I treated certain individuals during my time plagued by mental illness – and how I am desperately trying to make up for that. I do not wish to rehash this in this particular article – know only that there are specific people whom I still struggle to deal with.
Now I have, since I made this decision to break free from the clasp of mental health issues, found myself slipping back into momentary lapses of depression only when dealing with these individuals. People whom I feel, rightly or wrongly, have been affected most deeply by my actions whilst under the cosh of depression and, as such, have seen our relationships damaged by that.
It has caused me, on a number of occasions, to withdraw from social situations in which we find ourselves in close proximity, fearing that I cannot continue to have a decent time whilst the thick air of our broken friendship hangs in the atmosphere. I write this very article after one such escape.
However, I am also coming to realise that this, whilst seemingly ridiculous, is okay. It is an okay way to think, an okay way to act, an okay way to feel.
I believed that all would be put to rights the second I made the call to cease my depressive state – that all would immediately slot back into normality; back into the way things used to be. I now understand that this is foolish.
I have written before about how depression changes people and relationships, yet never did I truly heed my own writing. Rather did I view it as a distinct, distant, hypothetical – something that touches me, yes, but something I could easily overcome.
Now, I comprehend that this is not the case. It will continue to be tricky to navigate, and these broken relationships will continue to hurt – but what is humanity without pain? Would it not be a far more strange scenario for me to feel nothing towards these people who loved me once?
Yes, this is in fact healthy. It’s also healthy to wish to not hurt oneself any more by staying in close proximity to these people whom you love yet cannot love you back. It is, rather, a great sense of self-knowledge, to understand when one is feeling overwhelmed and, for the sake of self-preservation, to withdraw oneself from it.
It is okay to not always feel okay, and these moments of self-doubt; of depression; of anxiety; are all key parts in healing oneself. One cannot become immediately sea-ready following a storm – one first has to take time to fill in the holes.