#imactuallyreallybadatthis

Hey guys. A couple weeks ago, I had another pretty bad depressive episode where I was dead inside again yada yada. It motivated me to really consider medication for depression. I got a list of psychiatrists in the area from my current therapist but never ended up making any calls... because... I started to feel a bit better. But I still go up and down.

I was chatting with my ex this weekend to hang out because our previous interaction had actually sparked my depressive episode and I wanted to have a positive experience with him to counteract that. Which well. perhaps it’s not intuitive - yes, let’s hang out with the person that made you feel shitty. But well I’m hardly rational at this point, am I?

In any case, I was talking to him and I brought up that I was considering taking medication. And well, I was uncomfortable with the fact that he buys into the stigma with medication, it’s “unnatural.” But he was pretty insistent that I should go for it - maybe he was just trying to be supportive but I don’t know. He seems super convinced that I do in fact have depression. I don’t know. I just know that I experience many emotional symptoms of depression sometimes. I just know that if I want to instigate it all I need to do is remember how much pain I felt. How hurt I was. What he did.

This is tangential but I think it’s honestly pathetic how this breakup ruined me. Though to be fair, it might just be a catalyst for an already broken me.

There is a...silver lining.

He also recently started reading one of my favorite books of all time Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson (shameless plug). Well “reading.” Listening to an audiobook actually and I’ve been so happy sharing all these moments in the book that I love with him all the characters that I’ve missed so deeply. I was rereading it at the same time as him. Last year I tried very hard to get him to read it but no luck. I guess his sister convinced him and gave him audiobook links. I’d like to think that maybe I had something to do with it too. Maybe.

But the catch is he so frequently derides reading. And, me, for loving reading. He calls me a nerd, “jokingly.” He always says “I don’t read I’m a cool person.” And of course it’s exaggerated and meant to sound like a joke... only... I think he really does buy into that dialogue. There’s some element of truth to it, otherwise the joke wouldn’t be there in the first place.

And yet, today when he made another joke about it, I responded with “you hurt me.” And for the first time since we broke up, I honestly thought, “maybe I really do deserve better.” While that’s refreshing to think, it’s a little daunting because that means letting go of all the stability I feel hanging out with him and with my level of investment in him. All this time I’m secretly hoping that he can change and he’ll care enough about me that we can make it work. And well when I write it out like that it sounds absolutely naive and ridiculous.