Sunday 23 August 2015

coffee would be nice

read this story on Reddit the other day.

it's about a guy falling for a girl who suffers depression. and how it didn't end well.


honestly, there's something about depression that hits me. i mean, i feel a certain way for people who go through depression. it's so different and complicated compared to normal sicknesses whose symptoms can be seen with the eyes. like if someone is having fever, we'd know, because s/he is showing all the symptoms. in the case of depression, however, we do not know nor see any symptom. how can you know what is going through someone's head/mind? i find it so mind-boggling how someone can be smiling on the outside but at the same time there is a part of them that is breaking. and no one except that person knows.


i also find it particularly sad that there is no cure to depression. you can't help a depressed person, you can't fix them. well fuck, then how on earth are you supposed to love them? are you willing to be there during the good days and the bad? what if the bad days become so long you barely see the good ones anymore? what if one day you just give up, because why the fuck can't you be enough to stop the waves of sadness. are you not enough?

so many questions, so much emotions, too little answers.



anyways, here are some of the lines from the post that touched me. i love sad stories like these so much. all credit goes to the author for writing and posting it up. if it's a real story, i really hope you get through this. x



"You love me, don't you?" she suddenly said. "Like, I think it's a little obvious."
 "You could say that," I replied.
 "I have baggage," she whispered. I could hear her voice almost snapping in half. "I have a lot of baggage. Baggage you don't know about yet. I just wanna know if you're gonna be cool with that."
 I kissed her on her forehead. "I think I'll be okay, Gigi," I said. "I think I can handle it."

x

Love makes you do all sorts of crazy things - but one thing they don't tell you is that it makes you overestimate yourself. It's a bit like being drunk: you think you could maybe make that jump if you tried hard enough. You think that maybe nothing can break you. You think you could maybe be invincible. But you're not.


It was the angry bouts of depression that hit me the most. She would go on for a whole day at times, slumped on the floor of her apartment, staring at the ceiling. Almost catatonic with dread. She would play sad songs and curl up on the corner - and she wouldn't reply when I tried to talk to her. I would try to ply her with sweets and flowers, but she would sit there with her knees bent against her chin, unable to move.The next day, she would be fine and smiling. She would try to apologize in many different ways - she'd buy me lunch, ply me with sex, be a little more affectionate than usual. It was almost like she was buying her apologies with favors.
x

She sobbed and sobbed, visible through the broken headlights, and I sat inside the car as I suddenly realized that she went to places where I couldn't reach her, couldn't help her at all.
x

There is an exhaustion that sets in when you're trying to pick somebody up from the ground. It's a kind of tiredness that makes you realize that caring has a cost. Making yourself responsible for someone's happiness has a cost.

x

But I tried. Maybe not my best, but I tried. She was fantastic when she was fine, but I sat with her for long nights when she wasn't. When she was her old self, we'd hang out and sometimes I could pretend that we were in that coffee shop again, bantering our way to get through the week. When she wasn't, I stayed awake with her, lying on the floor alongside her when the she was too terrified of the world to move.

Sometimes, I came to resent that.

And in a bout of selfishness on my side, I came to resent it more. The small part of me that was tired and sleepless grew and grew, like a tumor on my side.

And in a bout of crooked selfishness, I decided that I had to let go.


x


sigh.