Just about six years ago I realized that I was depressed. It was early in that bout, but it hit me hard. I didn’t tell one of my good friends even though we told each other pretty much everything because I realized that’s what was wrong about a week before her wedding. There was no way that I was going to drop that on her as she prepared for her big happy day.
I didn’t tell another friend because she had cancer (she’s fine now).
We do that. We keep hard things from our friends and family because we either don’t want to detract from a happy occasion or we don’t want to add our problems on those who are dealing with their own stuff.
Right now, everybody is dealing with a lot. Does that mean we should all be keeping our hard stuff to ourselves?
No.
If I could go back six years I wouldn’t change the fact that I didn’t tell either of them about my depression at the time. I think I made the right decision in those cases, but we’re all going through hard times right now and we should be coming together (virtually may be best) and supporting each other in whatever ways we can while caring for ourselves.
Going through illness, deaths, job loss, relationship breakups, depression, or anything else that the past couple of years have brought down on us is hard. That your friends and family have been going through these things too is also hard, but we need each other. We need to reach out and we need to let others reach out to us.
