Okay. I really want to only give the short version.  I have experienced a major depression in my life about 25 years ago that lasted about three or four years.  I have done a great job maintaining my health with the use of antidepressants.  But stress and some past traumatic events in my life still keep me struggling with a baseline depression.  Really...I'm still trying to give the short version. 

Five years ago, when I was 45, I was a passenger in a three car accident that killed my boyfriend of eight months and caused me to spend the next two weeks in ICU with head and brain injuries.  It took me a bit more than a year to get back on my feet.   I was persistent.  As soon as possible I opened my own retail store and starting dating again.  I was making an income and so I invested in a home for me and a small investment property.  After two years the bottom fell out of the local economy.  I lost my store, my house and rental house are now both in foreclosure and I have been laid off from three jobs (due to the ongoing economy in SW Florida) I have spent my 401K and I am now living on food stamps and unemployment. I have sent out more then 80 resumes with only one job interview.  Through all this I was so grateful that I had a friend over the last couple years to buffer my growing situational depression. 

Twice in the last couple months my friend was angry at me and telling me I wasn't being a good friend because I wasn't returning her phones calls.  I explained that I was hibernating a bit due to depression and PTSD. But I still didn't understand why she was so angry. But she said that she thought I needed my ass kicked to get me going.  I told her I appreciated her wanting to help but kicking my ass was the last thing I needed.  Then over the last couple weeks she stopped returning my calls.  I wrote her an email that I was hurt by how she wasn’t taking time for us.  She wrote back that I had "damaged the relationship" and again she said I wasn't there for her and that she was really not going to make herself available because she had problems too and couldn't "buoy" me any more. That I had let her down for the last time.  She pointed to a particular situation where I arrived a few minutes too late to retrieve a key from an office.  This key was needed to unlock a local meeting hall and I had promise to arrive early so to get the AC going before a group of local merchants would be arriving.  She said this was the last straw and that my lack of consideration for her was not acceptable.  I asked her to stand in my shoes that I was dealing with depression and being unemployed for so long I had lost almost all sense of time management.  I apologized for the screw up and I took full responsibility for being behind schedule.  (BUT the meeting did start on time and the room wasn't hot.)  To me no big problem occurred due to my lack of motivation...but to her it was everything.  She said I was no longer dependable and that I needed to “get over it” because the car accident was five years ago.

Now this "friend" is a cancer survivor and I explained my illness doesn't have a timeline and it's no different then dealing with any chronic illness. I reminded her that I never asked her to “buoy” me at all.  But she still kept referring to me as selfish. I really could not get it into her head the insidiousness of a mental illness.  She was viewing me as weak.  She continued to berate me and I gave her a direct hit by saying back to her “Get over it!” Wow, I dished it back and now she was furious. 

Why am I writing all this out? I really think in my 51 years of life I have never had a “friend” end a relationship with me.  I have been really surprised at her take on all this and so hurt.  I have friendships that are 50 years old. Yes, I can be a pain in the ass and sometimes so are my friends.  When real friends get annoyed with each other I think we just back away for a short time because as the saying goes, “This too shall pass.”  No drama, no anger just friends that stand by each other.  I continue to be so shocked at how disposable a friend is to her.

And this was the short version.

Corie

"One thing I've realized in my recovery is that I never had patience for people who were sick," Pantoliano says. "I thought they were selfish, grandiose, or looking for sympathy, especially people who were alcoholics or drug addicts. Why don't you just stop and cut it out, I would think. And I realize now that my mother couldn't stop. She wasn't choosing a negative (behavior.) It was the only path."...Joey Pants, Thank you!

Tags: PTSD Depression Friend Anger Stigma

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