I do not suffer from depression

I do not suffer from depression - I feel I am blessed, truly blessed. However, I deeply love someone who suffers from depression - suffers being the optimal word here - for I know that he does suffer. I found the person in this world that makes me laugh, makes me feel that the world is a great place and life is wonderful - the person I want to spend the rest of my life with - how can he bring this to me when he himself has to struggle to see it or feel that way? I have loved him for over three years and through many many cycles of depression - and I plan to love him for many more years to come. If he'll let me.

Many of you probably know what I mean by that statement. When he's feeling the claws of depression he pulls away from the one person who is always there for him, from the one that truly loves him and wants so desperately to understand and make it better. The one that is slowly learning that I cannot make it better. Ah, that hurts - to not be able to help. But I'm sure that hurt is nothing in comparison to the hurt he feels when he pulls away from me.

For us we've found that it tends to work in a certain way. We're never quite sure what triggers it - but I, as the outsider, can feel it coming on for a week or more before the powerful grip wins out over his struggle to stay free. I do not know if he actually "knows" that it's coming, for during this time we cannot discuss it - it is too much for him and with our years together I have learned to not push - or I should correct myself and say I am learning. He begins to slowly be unavailable to me, he quits calling, but he accepts my attempts to stay in contact with him. He is not interested in going to lunch, but should I run into him he's friendly - but distant.

He tries to stay in contact - but though he is physically there in the same room- he is so removed from me emotionally and there is no physical contact between us. That's the hardest part because we are very physically demonstrative - and then suddenly - my touch he recoils from, to a certain degree. I will try my best to lay low - by now I am suffering too and missing him so very much. I try to give him this space and not push him for I have found that only makes it worse for him.

Each time over these years, he has come back to me. He will call suddenly and want to see me and he works his way back to the wonderful, loving, giving man that I know he is. Each time is a question in my mind...is this the last time? Will he once again make it back to me, or will it be too much. I cry. I cry for him and I cry for me and for what we are missing during these times. I'm still here. I'm not going anywhere. I love him. He knows that. I just hope that he "realises" that in his darkest times.

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