Happiness only real when shared

I 

Its been ages since I wrote!


I think of blogging at least once a week and I never actually get to sit down and enjoy writing. I notice I used to write more when I was single...ut oh. I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine about depression. Now taking into account that I am a mental health social worker and understand depression and different ways of treating it, when one is talking to their friend about how they are feeling and about myself, those same rules of "treating" don't apply. The same way I might be able to counsel couples in marriage therapy doesn't mean I am a whiz at my own relationship...OK so back to the conversation with my friend

She explained to me feeling down even though she was living abroad and "living the dream." She has been living and traveling in different countries for almost 2 years now and while initially moving abroad for a relationship that didn't work out, she didn't fly back home but decided to continue exploring. She asked me if she had everything she needed and was doing everything she had dreamed of she would still feel lonely and sad at times. I didn't know the answer of course, because well, those answers are often inside of us and we just don't know how to find them. What I did respond with was my own experience of depression, as being the lovely age of 31 now, I had actually forgotten that depression was something that I have had gotten my feet wet in a few times over the years. It was a nice feeling to HAVE to remember that, as in, I forgot because its been so long since I felt that way. Then I remembered, distinctively at the age of 17 feeling "lower than life" and discussing with my dad (this is back when I was actually a catholic and practicing church goer) how I felt and that I had felt that God had forgotten me, that everyone else seems to have something they were good at and seemed happy and yet I didn't feel I had any of those things. My dad helped me that year to feel better as did friends and activities and well, too be honest, growing up did, and maybe looking back it was a normal stage of being female and being a teenager. Everything changed when I went away to school and discovered more people than the 100 students I had graduated with and spent the last 12 years of my life with, and I discovered a whole new world of activities and ways to find happiness. It didn't go away right away, it took time for me to find strength and coping and to realize that when things went wrong and topsy turvy they would flip back over and the world wouldn't end. That did take time to learn. Well a few years later or almost 10 years to be exact, around the lovely age of 26 (sigh), I fell into another deep dark hole that I just could not seem to climb out of. I had ended a four year relationship with someone whom I loved but didn't want to spend the rest of my life with and knew that he couldn't help me achieve my dreams or goals. I knew this was the right thing to do but yet after it ended, i found myself also ended in a wet pile on the hardwood floor of my apt. I couldn't cope with being alone. I had believed myself to be strong, independent and courageous at my young age of 26, but yet when push came to shove, my knees gave in and I buckled. I did everything I could to try to feel better, I joined clubs and Spanish classes, ran everyday, worked more and more, tried to make more friends, had dates every week, dated some different guys, had plans with friends, etc...and yet three months down the road I found it harder and harder everyday to get up. I remember clearly (now that I have had to) many days of laying and staring from my bed out the small side window in my bedroom that had a fire escape terrace. All I could see from my angle on the bed would be leaves blowing on the trees and then eventually snow and white covering everything from my window to the tree. I just lay there.for hours.sometimes longer. 

I forgot this happened to me, but it did. I went to counseling, now I may be a counselor and mental health social worker, but that doesn't mean it makes it any easier for me to go to counseling, I didn't want the stigma that I couldn't take care of myself, but eventually I gave in and smartened up. Still I was just getting by, it wasn't until about 5 months later that I even decided to go on medication. Too many countless nights laying on my hardwood floor of my gorgeous apartment on State St imagining ways that I wouldn't be there anymore and then I wouldn't feel lonely. I went to see a psychiatrist and I got medication and within a week or two I felt better. Now I am NOT sure if that was the medication or not because at the same time that I felt better I also decided that I would stop laying on the floor staring at the ceiling but go someplace I have always wanted to go. I planned my trip to South America and spring started and that long 8 months of dreary fall and winter ended. Finally. I don't remember any days that summer feeling sad or alone. 

I left for South America on September 4th, exactly, ironically not planned, one year to the day after I ended my long term relationship. The first three months of being in Chile were absolutely hands down incredible, even the full month of being deathly ill and breaking my foot (all of which happened in the first four months) everything was just great. A whole new side of me had awakened, a side I knew existed but had gotten buried. I think sometimes the adventurous daring side of us is a little bit like a flat stomach. You have it growing up as a kid, you take it for granted, and its just there everyday. Then you get older and fatter, and as the years build up, the layers of fat do too and you knew you used to once have this flat stomach, but you were a kid and it probably went away with childhood. Well you can peel away the layers (literally if you choose to!) and figuratively (again if you choose to!). So there I was in Chile having a grand old time. My best friend came to visit me 5 months into my trip and I still remember this one day walking around with her looking at sights that she asked me how I had been (knowing the year before was a bit more difficult) and I told her how great I was and had been for so long, I had forgotten what I used to feel like, however, there was some nagging part of me that still felt loneliness that I couldn't escape and I still had the ability to see the depression like an pop up ad on the computer that you don't want but suddenly is just staring at you in the face until you can find the exit button. I wondered why this was. I had everything I always dreamed up why wasn't I completely fine again? 


Well I don't think it was until this conversation I had with my friend a few weeks ago that I discovered why. Like in the movie, Into the Wild, Christopher McCandles so kindly quotes: Happiness only real when shared. Recently I read the book, Love with a Chance of Drowning by Torre De Roche and in there they quote: At times a lone venture is nothing more than being alone. I discovered a possible truth in the conversation with my friend. Long ago I had everything I ever wanted. In my life I have always boldly followed my ehart and my dreams, I dont wait for second chances and I try my best to stay out of my comfort zone. I had done many of the things on my bucket list but I hadn't yet met the person that I could share them with, who would understand me deeper. I never used to believe this, I was a feminish in college and a very independent liberal woman as my mom would say growing up. However, twice in my life when significant relationships ended I found myself in a heap of loneliness and self hatred. Why? Because of that loss of second self. The loss of the secret communication with someone. To know someone is looking at your without the need to look at them. To feel home in someone else's glance. Well I hadn't found it until about 4 months after taht conevrsation with my best friend in South American. I finally found my other half. That persno who understands me deeper, who pushes me to my limits and waits for me with extended arms. Who never asks more of me than I have to give and who is as joyed as I am of my dreams and aspirations. I found yin and yang. I don't know if this is all really true I told my friend a few weeks ago, but its quite possible that even when you do amazing things and follow your dreams, they are sometimes just stories without an audience. 

I told my friend this, that maybe when she met the person that would bring her to the levels that she deserved, she wouldn't feel that moments of depression anymore, because I don't have the chance to feel sad anymore, when I have a thought, I tell my other half and he listens and then the thought is gone. Its not trapped in mind or body creating havoc. 

I can understand how some may not like this post, sounding like you "need" someone in your life to be happy, however, we are human beings and the most naturalistic and common thing about us is relationships. Is community. Without one another we wouldn't learn who we are, we wouldn't have the chance to explore and expand. We are born to 2 different people, we wouldn't survive in the beginning of life without someone else there. I don't think this ever really changes much as we wish it might. I think we need each other our whole lives.