My Depression Is Not Your Burden, Find A Friend Who Understands That

It felt like abandonment. You think you’re going to be friends with someone forever. That nothing could tear you apart. That the idea of not having them in your life is completely absurd.

They are with you for years. They cry with you when you go through your worst breakup. They laugh with you when you fall down the stairs. We believed in soul mates but that they come to us as friends, and not as lovers.

I was abandoned by the person I felt was the closest thing to “home” for me, if home were a feeling and at a time where I had never felt lower in my life. I was battling the worst part of my depression.

It was a time I needed the love and support of my best friends the most.

I’ve learned and realized so many things these last few months. Friends are not forever. And people change. And your best friends betray you and abandon you. And friends that walk away from you during the worst time in your life are not any friends at all. And it took you walking out of my life for me to realize how much better I am without you in it.

You shouldn’t have to ask for your friends to worry or care. You shouldn’t have to make excuses for why you felt they needed to see you when you were sick in the hospital for three months. You shouldn’t have to ask for your friends’ love and approval. You shouldn’t have to constantly ask your friends if you did something wrong when they emotionally manipulate you into thinking you did. You shouldn’t have to feel like you are walking on eggshells around them. You shouldn’t have to apologize to your friends when they say and do things to continuously hurt you.

You shouldn’t have to ask for your friends to love you during your difficult times. They just should.

So to you: during the worst year of my life battling some of the hardest and most difficult tests that I have ever had to go through, you distanced yourself enough to take yourself out of my life completely. You called me an attention whore because I questioned your distance and your abandonment.

I will not apologize for the struggles that I faced.

I will not apologize for missing you when I felt so alone. I will not apologize for being sick. Instead, I thank you for abandoning me. Thank you for walking away when I was at my worst. You cried with me when I was abandoned in the past. And now you’ve perfected that move.

I finally learned what I deserve.

And it’s not someone who emotionally manipulates you when you’ve done nothing wrong. It’s not someone who only talks to you when it’s convenient for them. It’s not someone who uses you as their punching bag when they have their own things going on. And it is definitely not someone who tells you, “You just want our pity” when I was laying in a hospital bed alone aching for you to show up.

It’s not someone who takes your depression as their burden. My depression has never been your burden.

Your love was always conditional.

My depression is on me. Your abandonment is on you.