A few weeks ago, I posted this tweet:
Please check in with your friends if you haven’t heard from them in a little while. Silence might mean they’re drowning and could really use a friend.
— Chantelle (@_cjw) September 18, 2018
Now it’s time for the flip-side of this.
If you’re in trouble, don’t be silent. Try to reach out to your friends. Please ignore the awful thoughts telling you that you’ll hurt them, that they don’t care, that you’re a monster, that you don’t deserve them…ignore all of that. Give your friends a chance to help you.
In 2013, I was going through a major depressive episode. I’d been struggling with depression since my school years,* but this was a particularly bad period. After years of trying to handle the suicidal ideation and insomnia and panic attacks on my own, I decided to get serious professional help. And I stopped talking to my best friend.
* Although I didn’t realise I was depressed until I was 20 (funny story, tell you about it later), and wasn’t officially diagnosed until I was 23.
The logic seemed sound at the time. I was really struggling. I didn’t have the energy to reach out, and I didn’t want to drag her into this awfulness. I assumed if she wanted to hang out, she would reach out to me.
I didn’t hear from my friend for several weeks, and the awful thoughts crowded in:
She didn’t want to know me.
She was happy I’d stopped messaging her.
She hadn’t even noticed I’d stopped messaging her because I meant nothing to her.
Already in a bad place, I quickly found myself in a worse one, torturing myself with the “fact” that my friend didn’t want to know me. I didn’t want to see her life playing out on my friends’ list, happy without me…it felt like a taunt. So I unfriended her on Facebook.
Fast-forward to a month ago. Nearly five years had gone by, I’d recovered some mental fortitude, and I didn’t want to turn 30 without at least checking in with my friend. She was…is…was my best friend, practically a sister, without whom I literally would not have survived high school. I had missed her every single day. So I finally reached out. I noticed, with a shock, that she’d messaged me once while we’d been out-of-touch, on my birthday in 2014.
My friend quickly replied to my message, and we agreed to catch up. We met up for coffee. Neither of us got drinks; we were too busy catching up. I glossed over what had happened with me; I didn’t want to…worry her, I guess.
I found out that she had finished her degree, is working in her chosen profession, and is even planning to do some post-graduate study. She had just started university when we stopped talking. I was so happy to know she had finished her degree, and was doing well in her career.
I asked after her family. When we stopped talking, I also lost touch with her family, and that had hurt just as much as losing touch with her: I’m an only child, and I spent so much time at my friend’s place from the ages of 15 to 19 that I kind of felt like her family were part of my extended family. She filled me in on how her parents we doing, her siblings, her nieces and nephews and grandparents.
And then she told me she had gotten married. And she told me that when it had come time to pick her bridesmaids, she had considered getting in touch with me, but she hadn’t.
It hit me like a tonne of bricks. I was utterly devastated, but I think I covered it well. My friend had gotten married…and she thought that I wouldn’t have wanted to know about it, to congratulate her, to wish her and her husband well in their life together. We moved onto other topics, but I had this ball of misery roiling in my chest, and when we finally separated to go home, I sat in my car and cried.
I cried for the rest of the day, and most of the next, and spent all of that time along with the next couple of weeks wondering how I had gotten to this point, where I hadn’t spoken to my best friend for nearly five years, where I had missed her wedding. How had it come to this? I knew it was all my fault, but how?
Through some discussion with my awesome psychologist, I came to grips with the fact that yes, some of the responsibility rests on my shoulders. Instead of reaching out to my friend, instead of giving her a chance to help me, I hid myself away. My psychologist told me that although it was terrifying, I needed to address this issue. I needed to check in with my friend and let her know what had happened with me.
So today we met up again. We went to the dog park with our dogs and my friend’s niece, who was just a baby last time I saw her. And although I was scared as hell, I told my friend my side of things: the depression and anxiety and suicidal thoughts, not wanting to burden her, not hearing from her and assuming she didn’t want to know me, unfriending her and not seeing her birthday message. Finally getting it together enough to reach out to her.
Y’all, she thought I had gone overseas. I’ve always loved travelling, ever since I’ve known her…when we were in high school, I turned my atlas into a collection of the epic road-trips I wanted to go on with her. I’ve never been shy about the fact that I’m not a fan of the Australian weather, and eventually want to move somewhere a little easier to live (I’m built for cold weather). So when she hadn’t heard from me, my friend assumed I had gone overseas. She had no idea that I’d been struggling. She didn’t know.
I didn’t give her the opportunity to know.
I don’t know where our friendship will go from here. I wish things could go back to the way they were, but that isn’t going to happen. Hopefully we can move forward from here and build something new.
So to reiterate, the moral of the story is this: if you are struggling, don’t be silent. Reach out to your friends. Don’t close yourself off. Ignore the awful thoughts telling you that you’ll hurt them, that they don’t care, that you’re a monster, that you don’t deserve them…ignore all of that. Give your friends a chance to help you.
There’s this saying, that silence is golden. I don’t think it is. I think silence is silver: if you neglect it, let it lie and ignore it, it can tarnish. So don’t let silence tarnish your life. Try to reach out.
