A good
question. When a person who regularly suffers from
depression many times they feel the need to ask this
question. A question which almost always returns the same
answer. Though the question is asked of themselves and returned only to themselves.
How can you ask;
"Will you love me, though there may be weeks at a time when I become the worst person you have ever met, though I may simply stop going to work one day, that I may hide inside the house and avoid even you? Can you care about someone who can change completely in an hour, from light and happy to dark, sad and angry? Is it possible to care for one who can not gurantee that everyday they will care for you. Can you deal with one who may one day need to go away for weeks at a time to be watched and medicated at the costs of hundreds of dollars a day? Can you care for one who everytime this happens may go far enough to actually pull the trigger or to drive their car of the side of the road?"
"Can you love me?"
"Can I ask?"
An addition to this w/u:
I wrote this little thing almost seven years ago. You may not know it, but I hate this piece of drivel. It is not the ideas that bother me so much as it the whining and a vague sense of wonder that I ever was really this stupid. I am not saying I have solved my problems or that things have been perfect for me, or even that I am that much more stable now.
To be honest, at the time I was 21, and an emotionally stunted man-child. I had little in the way of experience with relationships and even less in the way of success. The above piece of writing reflects less on my fear of what will happen and more on my yearning for something to happen. It is disingenuous and frankly more of a cry for pity.
Over the past few years I have evolved and changed. I honestly feel that I am not the man I need to be to have a successful relationship with another person. I still am not where I can handle the good times or the bad times. Yes, euphoria can crush me as much as deep sadness can. My emotions, simply stated, are not always my own to control.
I have dabbled with alcoholism, destroyed my life twice and done things I probably should be in jail for. Okay, maybe not jail, but I am definitely lucky not to have any arrest record. I've almost killed myself to gain attention from a girl who already loved me and lost her because of it. I've behaved like a complete asshole at times and like a psychotic one at other times.
But I've also had my successes. I left my home country and left my support structure, the family that I could count to come running whenever I felt the need for attention, and I survived. I know I have matured emotionally and I can honestly say that while I don't have the emotional maturity of a 28 year old, I might have reached a stage equivalent with a college aged man / young adult. I have learned how to analyze myself and how to understand myself and my actions.
In short I have matured in the years that have passed and I will continue to mature. I have a lot of work to do with myself and I lot more hope that I can do it. I no longer look back at the people who hurt me, and frankly I can't remember most of their names now. If I could offer any advice to people who this resonates with, it is simply to stand back, to put yourself in order. Yes, you might be lonely now, but you WILL be lonely again in your life. If you cannot deal with it now, what will happen in the future? People will not fix you and people will not make you better. People are complicated things that are difficult to understand in the best of times, let alone the worst. You are all that you can really have control over, so get that control. It may take a year, it may take twenty, but get that control.