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Key points
- The vicissitudes of mental illness can make it difficult to keep friends.
- Prejudging others’ ability to handle depression is a disservice to them.
- To find true friendship, one must invest in the truth about their depression.
Once, not so very many years ago, it was hard for me to make a friend. Or maybe I should say, it was hard for me to keep a friend. Making friends was easy—I just had to get manic, and presto! All my shyness went away, and I could talk to anyone, about anything. Or else I just had to down a few martinis, and the “other” Terri would come bursting out of her shell, where she had been hiding away. Usually, the liquor led straight to the mania, and the two would combine to create a whirlwind of conviviality.
But whirlwinds spin you until you’re dizzy, and what may have begun as an enticing conversation would soon turn into a cross-examination. I’d want to know everything—everything!—and no subject was ever out of bounds. The person on the other side of this inquisition would be tickled at first, then deeply flattered, then entranced by my apparent breathless interest in every last detail of their life. You’ve never been truly appreciated until a manic person takes it into her head to find you fascinating.
Nobody can keep up that level of intensity. Once I cycled down from the mania and the alcohol seeped out of my bloodstream, I’d go back to being ordinary. Ordinarily dull, and extraordinarily shy. Or worse yet, severely depressed. I couldn’t keep up with all the interest I’d created when I was on a manic bender. For several days, my phone would refuse to stop ringing:
“Terri, where are you? It’s Jim, from the other night.”
“Terri, did you get my message? It’s Lila, let’s have lunch like we agreed.”
“Terri, where did you disappear to? It’s Sam. I’m still waiting for you to call me back.”
The messages would pile up until my voicemail was full. Sometimes I’d get cards or gifts or flowers. And I wouldn’t be able to respond in kind. All that effort to reconnect with me would be met by one thing: silence.
Weeks would go by, sometimes months, before I could pick up the phone again and try to smooth things over. But after a while, I’d run out of lies. You can only be sick so many times, your old college roommate can only visit so often before it starts to sound like exactly what it was: a ruse to hide behind. Back I’d go into my shell, having bewildered, hurt, and insulted people I never intended to harm. I only wanted a friend.
It was years before anyone actually called me on my behavior. It took a very brave woman to finally confront me. “What’s up with you?” Julie asked me. “Why do you blow so hot and cold? It makes it very hard to count on you as a friend, although I’d like to.” I was speechless at first—nobody had ever dared to name the elephant in the room before. I remember blushing several shades of crimson, although she was on the other end of the phone and couldn’t see me squirm.
“I—I—I really don’t know how to answer that,” I sputtered.
“Well, try.”
So I did. I told her that sometimes I get so depressed, it’s impossible for me to pretend to be normal, or even to have a simple conversation with another person. And I never want anyone to see me then, because I knew how hideous I must look, and how contagious my depression could be.
“You know, you’re not giving me very much credit,” Julie said. “Why don’t you give me a chance?”
Seeing it from her point of view made all the difference in the world. I realized I was in fact prejudging my friends by not trusting them with the truth. Some of them might not be able to handle it, but maybe some of them could. What a precious opportunity to find out, and I was just throwing it away.
So the next time I got depressed, I called Julie up and said, “Look, I feel absolutely horrible. I can barely talk. But if you still want to have lunch with me, I’ll show up. I can’t promise anything after that, and I’m sorry in advance for putting you through it.”
We met, and somehow I survived, although I didn’t have much to say. Julie took up the conversational slack, for which I was very grateful. Driving home, I cried from sheer relief—the first time was bound to be the hardest. Julie called me later that night. “I can take you quiet,” she told me. “I just can’t take you when you don’t let me in.”
Since that life-changing lunch, I’ve trusted more and more people with the truth. To my astonishment, most of them are made of stronger stuff than I had ever imagined. Of course, there will always be some who can’t handle being around depression; for whatever reason, they fear the darkness too much to see it embodied and sitting across the table from them. But the ones who stick around even though I’m not at the top of my game—those are the ones I want in my life. I’m thrilled to say that the friends I make are now also the friends that I keep.
