Why Depression Was my Best Friend

In the very recent past, I realised that depression was possibly my longest standing friend. Not a good friend (so don't immediately shout me down for romanticising my own rubbish mental health, please hear me out).

But the kind of obnoxious, self-righteous 'friend' who comes into your home, uninvited. Who does better than you in school but "didn't even try and wanted to do better."

That undermines you and always has it worse than you.

That bullies you, calls you fat, pathetic, disgusting, and somehow still hangs around and you don't quite hate them because they're just being honest. The word I'm probably looking for is 'abusive'.

At the start of my depression, I didn't even realise it was there. I just didn't like myself. As a teenage girl, it's definitely hard enough, but there always felt like there was another layer to it.

When the self-harm started, that felt normal, too. All the other 14-year-old girls I was friends with did it too, but they of course (in my eyes at least) they all must have had it much harder, and I wasn't really doing it for me. How could I be?

When I hit 16, stopped going to school, broke things, hurt the people I cared about in ways that I know will never be forgiven, I still didn't think I had it that bad. I knew I was hurting, and I took it out by destroying things and self-harming. But even then, it was my fault, and there were plenty of people that had it worse.

But now at 18, now medicated and on a long road of accepting myself, I have looked back on depression as a friend. When I first started struggling, it was something there for me. It was a painful feeling that I felt I could fall into. It was the addiction of self-harm and binge drinking and abusing myself in whatever way I could to feel things.

Whenever I have bad days my depression always welcomes me back, makes me second guess my choices to seek help because I don't deserve it. Reminds me to not eat, or to binge and cry and cut and think about how many pills I could take to make it all go away. She sits on me when I sleep in for 15 hours, on the bad days after forgetting to take my meds for a few days during a bad week.

She was someone on my dark days, on the anniversaries, the birthdays- who I could always turn to.

I don't want this to seem like a self-pity article, rather as more of an introspection. I know I am recovering: I can do things I never thought I would. I have a job, friends (not shitty ones, beautiful, loving, like minded people) and a far better outlook that I ever did.

Yet I know, for a long time, she will always be there. One day, yes, she'll be gone and I'll fucking love myself for it. But for now, she's like a long distance abusive ex-best friend who I manage to let slip in when it all gets too much.

I know, in time, with the help I'm getting with both counseling and medication (which have both helped and are fantastic, for me at least) she will get kicked for good and I will be all the better for it.

Footnote: Before I get negative feedback, which I assume I will, this article is not the most eloquent thing I have ever written. I don't know how to express the way I felt about this without looking as if I'm romanticising what it's like to struggle with mental health. Mental health should never be romanticised, it should be taken as seriously as possible and people should never be shunned or undermined for having a personal struggle, no matter how seemingly big or small it is.