I have now successfully achieved total abandonment by everyone. My best friend’s practically gone. He’s pretty much involved with his girl. Not only did my friends sack me but dumped me too. I’ve even managed to get rid of my boyfriend as well. I can’t deal with anyone. I feel so low it hurts. I have no energy. I lie in bed all day, hating myself for everything – for fucking up relationships, for being unable to trust anyone, for lying in bed all day, for being me and for just being alive. Self-torment has now become my main occupation and it is exceedingly tiring. I spend ninety percent of my time in bed, crawling out only very occasionally for essential functions. I know I am suffering from a serious depression and I wish I could just file all my feelings under this label and just think of myself as ill. Sometimes I tell myself not to take my thoughts seriously as they are not properly sensible thoughts but the result of a genuine illness, albeit a mental one. But when I stop thinking, I start hurting. The emotions take over. I am in physical pain. Sometimes I am hungry and my stomach is rumbling like mad, but I can’t face leaving the apartment. I wait for my sisters to come round for provisions. I feel like a zombie. I don’t answer the phone. I haven’t the concentration to read. I can’t be bothered with the television.

The only place I do drag myself to is the mall. Despite my education, intelligence, opportunities and lack of discrimination, I am unable to go shopping. I feel alienated and worthless.

And where is my good friends in all this misery? Very sensibly, you may say, they aren’t anywhere to be seen. Sometimes I catch them online and they occasionally listens to m as I monosyllabically detail the reasons why I am worthless. They make sympathetic noises, and gives me some general advice and disappear offline and not to return for another 2-3 days.

I feel incredibly let down. All those times, I have been there for most of them when they needed me, hour after hour, bored rigid at times but never letting it show. Most of all, I listened to them and sat with them during the worst times. Now I get the feeling they cant get away quick enough in case I infect them with my misery. I realize that although some of them are great to have fun around, they are also incredibly selfish, and that over the time that I have known them, they dump their friends everytime they’re with someone. As it hasn’t happened for quite a while, I’d forgotten that this was what they were like, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t depressed last time it happened.

I seem to be caught in some pattern of being let down by those around me. I am not saying that everyone has let me down, but right now I can only think about those that have. I blame myself for this. I am convinced that the fault lies with me. I tell myself the following:

1. My friends let me down. Believe it or not, I blame myself for this, too. I blame myself for exercising bad judgment and allowing myself to invest trust in someone who is clearly not a sister. I also think (and I doubt you’ll follow the logic of this unless you are qualified and experienced psychotherapist) that somehow it was my fault that the ignored me after I left. Maybe I wasn’t a good enough friend to them. Maybe I’m talking karmic here, because I am a shit, nasty person, I attract similar people into my life. Anyway, somehow or other, I am sure that it is my fault.
2. Why do I choose selfish, fair-weather friends? I must have a defective friend selector mechanism in my makeup. I am also upset by my selfish neediness in wanting my best friend to devote some of his time and energy to me when he is currently so happy and madly in love. I feel bitter that his new relationship is taking off while mine has crashed and burned and I feel guilty about that too as it must mean that I am a horrible person.

Although I am horrible and fucked up, I am actually a fair person. I divide my time equally between self-hate and projecting it onto others and everyone else who has ever let me down.

Aside from my self-imposed isolation, I am painfully aware that there are very few people whose company I can tolerate in such a state, My friend Grace came round. I unleashed the full scale of my misery on her, she listened with sympathy and sensitivity and I haven’t heard from her since last summer. I have other mail friends but I am unwilling to let them see me in this state, preferring to allow them to retain their image of me as a lively, funny, party girl rather than confront their unease when I reveal the other me.

My female friends can be neatly divided into two categories. The first contains whose love and support I find hard to accept, such is my deep sense of unworthiness. I am nevertheless aware of their love and support and they are my lifeline to remembering that not all humanity is thoroughly despicable. The second category contains good friends who are nevertheless useless at times such as these and must be avoided in order to avert violence. For example, my old friend Sarah, who I adore but who I know in advance will annoy the hell out of me. She kindly rings me up with nothing but the best of intentions.

Admonitions to “cheer up” are not the worst of it. Some people’s aversion to acknowledging their own pain is so great that they are more aggressive in their words of comfort. My sisters actually managed to drag me out one night. I look normal from the outside, a little haggard and with a dull skin tone, but I could pass for a member of the human race without too many questions. My sisters think it’s an improvement that I am venturing from my apartment; they think I am ready to re-enter the world. I haven’t mentioned my prime motivation for leaving the sanctuary of my home in case they try to be sensible and tell me what I already know: I’m going to feel a lot worse tomorrow. I don’t care. I just want to escape from reality now.

“You really should pull yourself together,” they sad. “You can’t just sit around feeling sorry for yourself. You need to pick yourself up, get out there and make it happen.”

I am too depressed to stick up for myself and say what I want to say, so I sink into the sofa and blink back my tears.

If I were not depressed, this is what I would had the nerve and energy to say to them:” Oh God. You mean it’s that easy? I don’t have to sit as a prisoner in my apartment? I can go out and party and enjoy myself? Why didn’t I think of that? So when I wake up with no energy and a pain in my heart, I should bounce out of bed and get out here? Oh my God! All this time I have spent feeling utterly miserable and worthless and all I had to do was just get out there and make it happen. You’re a genius. That never occurred to me” Once she realized that I was being sarcastic, I would go on, “Have you ever been depressed? Or don’t you let yourself? Why don’t you just keep on running, hoping that if you don’t sit for a moment, you won’t actually feel anything at all? If you don’t accept your own sadness, why should you accept mine?” And finally, “Would you tell someone who is physically ill, say someone had that MS, to just get up and get out there and pull themselves together? OR are you still from the Dark Ages and believe that mental illness is all in the mind, as such, does not really exist?”

Well, maybe next time. If I’m not depressed.