I’m sharing a personal correspondence with a friend of mine with his permission. I asked his permission to share this exchange, in light of a serious epidemic, we all need to face DEPRESSION. Please read this exchange ALL THE WAY til the end and share your thoughts and feeling with us. It’s an important conversation and a deep healing can happen for us all.
Thank you!
Andrea
On Mon, Jun 4, 2018 at 7:38 PM,
This was the first email I received from him.
Andrea,I’m embarrassed for not writing back to you sooner, As time has moved on since you wrote me, the harder it’s been for me to explain my silence, and the more guilty I have felt for shutting you out.. I’m still trying to figure it all out myself. I’ve bee cocooning myself in my own little space here the past couple of months, too often depressed, too often staying in my little zone of comfort that lately has been feeling more uncomfortable. I won’t talk more about it other than to say I’m sorry.
My first response:
On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 1:20 PM, Andrea wrote:
Hey Jim!
Awww! I’m so sorry you have been moving through depression. You poor thing. Sending you big hugs! Please know you’re not alone!! I’m here! I care about you!
I just read about Kate Spade this morning. I thought to myself, “What was she feeling and thinking?”
And then I read your email and thought JIM! Please don’t go to that place without reaching for people like me, who care about you. I’m here! Let me know how I can support you! I’m calling you now.
Love, Andrea
On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 7:49 PM, Jim wrote Andrea:
Love you so much. Your words mean so much. Knowing that you are in my corner helps to gives me strength. I’m going to keep on trying to work my way out of this malaise. Your wise words shine like a twinkling vision of light at the end of the dull and dim tunnel that I’ve found myself moving through lately. I can feel your lovely presence in my heart and I’m so grateful for your friendship and support.Thanks for accepting me, even through my times of trouble.Love, Jim
Looking deeper into Depression
Jim’s brutally honest response after I asked him to share with me what he was thinking and how he was feeling:
Dear Andrea”
“You are a smart woman, my friend. I am still here too and you are right, I do have a tendency to bottle my emotions up. I may have learned that from my father. The blessed moments of feeling comfortable in my own skin, seems to me, not as easily achieved as it is for others. Maybe this is a result of my own deep-seeded insecurities and my own early life being raised in a family that wasn’t that socially oriented or overtly free to express feelings openly. When they were expressed they weren’t done so explicitly. Is being socially awkward hereditary? There was always a element of passivity, not a giving passivity but one delivered with a disregard or even with contempt. I’m not trying to place blame but to understand my own feelings of disenfranchisement. I know that I’m naturally introverted. I’m not ashamed of that. I am ashamed of my prejudices, my jealousies, my confusions, my feelings of displacement many of which manifest in me with feelings of guilt and then a deep sadness for feeling guilty.
I don’t want to give you the impression that things are at a breaking point here. I do have thoughts of suicide sometimes but these feelings are not constant. I always end up thinking about my daughter, my mother, Charlie and Sebastian, and you, my dear Andrea. ( it’s hard to express just how much you mean to me. Your caring goodness and your love is not lost on me. I need to tell you that before I continue).
I am pulled away from the abyss by thoughts of how much pain my demise would inflict on you and the other little circle of life that keep me afloat. I could never take my own life for that reason. But the feelings of depression persist, some periods are around for longer than others. I don’t remember anytime in my life when there were extended periods of comfort and happiness. Is this normal? I really don’t know. It may explain my inability to remain in a committed intimate relationship with a woman. Sometimes I pain so much for a woman that it feels way worse than any physical pain that I’ve experienced. It isn’t necessarily sexual, though that is definitely part of it. I want to have commitment and compassion but feel so often incapable of being committed or compassionate. Feelings of inadequacy sometimes keep me up at night. I’m haunted and bound tight to feelings of failure. I’m tightly drawn into looking really closely at a world that I don’t feel myself comfortable in. Does that even make any sense? The future scares me. I’m scared for Charlie and Sebastian.
I internalize this fear, hide it from family and then passive aggressively take it out on society and myself. It’s partly why, I think, I commute everywhere on my bicycle. I know that it may cause some of those drivers a little bit of frustration knowing that they have me to deal with on the road. Sometimes I even fantasize about being hit and injured only for the reason that I would derive pleasure, if still alive, from the guilt and horror that this might cause the careless driver, preferably the driver of one of those large redneck p/u trucks. I ride the bike and I ride it fast and hard. It’s my way of inflicting pain on myself and screaming at the world, Fuck You, I’m HERE!
Juxtaposed with all that frustration and angst in me there is a love intense and true. It bubbles up in me. It can’t be adequately described with words. It is a love for the feelings I have for those two precious grand kids. (I wish you could see them now). What did I do to deserve those two marvelous wonders in my life? It is a love for You! How did I come about to be blessed with your support and Love? It is a love for the ability to create. Where did it all come from? Why the gift of life for me? I’ll end it on that mysteriously positive note.
Thanks You,
Jim
