Posted by baseball55 on January 6, 2013, at 19:01:59
In reply to Why?, posted by ChicagoKat on January 6, 2013, at 11:47:23
My husband got so frustrated with my depression, which lasted on and off for three years, that he once said he wished I'd kill myself. We talk about it now. It's incredibly hard on loved ones. You are not the same person. People feel abandoned and overwhelmed and, if they've never suffered depression or never seen really severe depression, tend to blame you for not pulling it together, snapping out of it.
I had a close friend who went through a bout of severe depression and we would talk about it, because she knew I knew how it felt. And yet, even I found myself fighting an urge to tell her to exercise more, get out of the house, do this, do that. I felt completely abandoned. Suddenly we had no friendship anymore. We just had this misery and turning away to cope with. That's how I felt (though I didn't tell her this) and I had suffered from severe depression of pretty long duration.
So imagine how it feels to someone who never experienced this and never witnessed someone else experiencing this. A person you had a relationship with is suddenly gone emotionally. To my husband, it was like I no longer cared about him or my daughter, that I was completely self-absorbed.
poster:baseball55
thread:1034805
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20121231/msgs/1034857.html