Dating: When Depression Enters and Communication Ends
When I was 20, I got into my first serious relationship. The man – he was younger than me by 18 months and was basically a dream come true. From his chocolate-brown eyes to his native american skin tone. In short, the man could make me melt by just looking at me.
It was around the beginning of 2002 that I went to where he worked one night beaming with the blessed knowledge that we were going to be parents! This thrilled him moreso than me, in retrospect. He could experience my growing belly and the first time he could place his hand on my stomach and feel the baby kick. I, however, had to suffer all the morning sicknesses and doctors prodding me monthly. We shared everything during this time as much as possible. If I were worried about something, I wasn’t afraid to express this to him. I recall even crying one night in fear of something being wrong with the baby. He showed such compassion, holding me in my over-hormoned state and reassuring me that everything was fine. I recall it just like a favorite motion picture, he bent over to my stomach and said, “see? Your mommy is crying about you because she loves you so much.” He couldn’t have said more truer words. It was then I perhaps first realized that this was the person I wanted to spend my life with.
The relationship progressed wonderfully, to help get us on our feet, my parents opened their doors to us to move in, get help with the baby and save up monies to get our own place.
The First year of this proved to be a trial. My ex, who was just 21 by this time, wanted to go out, experience and have a good time still. I did, too, but in my envious state I kept my claws about him and it started to damage our relationship.
We had bank issues, too, which still to this day baffled us – because somehow our bank decided it was a nice idea to overdraft us three times. Like with most couples, this caused a fight.
Setbacks started to throw me into a severe depression – one where I felt like I was drowning and never going to get a breath of air ever again. He spent money more freely than he should’ve. He had become responsible for his late father’s bills, something that enrages me still to this day. His friends were unfamiliar to me and I had estranged myself from them – even causing one to admit that at one time he would’ve like to hit me. There were no signs of us ever moving out. This anger and pain started to show in everything I did. I didn’t want him leaving me. I wanted him here with me 24 hours a day 7 days a week. I slept in late, shoving off my daughter on my father in the morning so I could go back to sleep. I started turning to my mother in anger, complaining about every little thing he did that irritate me. In my depressed state I became worse than a critic at a movie review. It was Novemberish when he overheard my mother say something to me about kicking him out. And shortly after – a mixture of his anger towards my mother and an exhaust of my depression – he moved out.
By now it was 2005 and I was set on working on things. He was my first love – the father of my daughter – he was in short, my everything. I tried writing him appreciative e-mails and giving him attention when he came to visit, but I was still deep in depression. Even moreso after February of that year and my father passing on. I felt completely trapped. Not only had I lost my father, but in a way, so had she. The timing of him getting ill and her father moving out were within weeks of each other – something that surely distressed both her and I, as daughters, equally. I hated my father for leaving when we still needed him and I hated her father for not being there for her when she needed him. I was mourning twice and should’ve been there more for my daughter.
He still came over all the time to visit and in truth, we were still having a wonderful sexual relationship. But the fact was, without communication that we needed desperately, I was still depressed.
It took one large fight on halloween to make me put two and two together. It was that night I realized that I was hurting him and ultimately hurting myself and our child. I knew I couldn’t go on in this wretched path. I had already shoved him away and it would be a matter of time before I didn’t want my daughter around either.
I became so absorbed in getting my life in order that when I got my first job in 5 years in February of 2006, I didn’t even want him around to visit. He had already mentioned moving on and started seeing another woman who at that time was 8 months pregnant by another man. It devastated me but I knew that I had to keep going on. I even attempted dating someone in that time.
I had turned myself completely around from Halloween – everyone noticed it. I had lost weight, gotten my home in better conditions, had a full time job with a whole heap of benefits and I was happy. I could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.
There came a time, eventually, where my ex stopped coming around and everything for over a month. It didn’t phase me, but, at that time the less contact the better for us. I hated him. He had left me when I needed him and nothing would change that hatred.
Mother’s Day of this year, however, something changed. I was lucky enough to get to sleep in and I was dumbfounded when both daughter and ex walked into my bedroom that morning and started to shake my bed to wake me. I hadn’t seen him in well over a month by then. He looked good. So he wished me a happy mother’s day and our daughter scampered off to play.
This was perhaps the first time in nearly two years he and I could be open to talk to each other. To speak and listen. I rambled on, laughing and lounging as I normally did by then, which was a complete shock for him. For some reason, shortly after he and I started talking, I decided to be a smarty and try to wrestle him. I’d lost weight and gained muscle, after all! So we started to play wrestle and he was still stronger than me. I remember laughing and saying, “Oh well if you were THIS forceful when we were together we’d STILL be in a relationship.” One thing turned to another and for the first time in half a year – we had acted a couple and become intimate.
In his turn to speak, he said he’d missed me and my familiarity. He was proud of how far I’d come and the fact that I was finally happy. I told him at that time that it was he who turned my life around. He was the reason I’d written a letter to myself pinpointing everything I was doing to others and I had no longer hated him for this. I was beyond whatever pettiness that had been in the past.
By July I had let him know that I’d developed feelings for him again. I figured this would be the actual end all of anything and with a deep pitted fear I sent the note off to him confessing these feelings. I couldn’t deny them and if I couldn’t get them out to him openly I felt that as a person my whole outlook and goal of being more open would be destroyed. For the next day or two I was worried that my confession would cause him to not be around for our daughter or even have him come around to gently let me down. I expected a complete nuclear meltdown of things.
Instead, he came to me with a proposal to spend more time together as friends and see how things went from there. It was a complete shock to my whole system. As he mentioned this I couldn’t help but shake and in being anxious to even at least have a great friendship with this man for the rest of our lives. He said it would probably be against what I wanted, but it was a start and every good thing has to have a beginning.
Babysteps. To this day, we’re still working on things and talking online when we can. We’re more open and honest about who we are all around and so far things are progressing wonderfully. He’s even agreed to discuss a relationship with me again. Of course, both my daughter and I are hopeful that things work out this time around. But only time can tell.
In one of our conversations, I had told him I KNEW where we went wrong. We lost each other in the hustle and bustle of daily life. More importantly, we stopped talking. We turned to others instead of each other and turned what should’ve been a two-person relationship into a small community relationship.
Instead of working together, we worked apart and while he was contributing to the bills and everything else, I was just sitting there feeling sorry for myself.
And ultimately, which I still feel is what made him reconsider getting to know me and us, I took the blame. I didn’t try to cast it off on someone else. I couldn’t blame him and I couldn’t blame anyone else. I had chosen to stop talking to him. I apologized for putting him through that hell and wished I hadn’t. He even admitted if I had been as I am now two years ago, he would’ve proposed.
He accepted my apology and each day is a wonder. Somedays he’s grumpy and I respect his space, somedays I don’t feel like talking to him and then there are days where he visits and things are amazing. But each day is another battle to keep going on and remembering to not lose sight of us.
But all in all, while things are working out and we’re not together, I’m doing all right. I work hard on many projects, of course, including preparing my daughter for pre-school. I’ve shifted my focus less on having to be in a relationship with nonstop attention (which I feel is a complete downfall) and moreso on far more important things in life. Enjoying the here and now and forgetting the past and miserable. After all, we’re only given so much time on this planet. I take the time to smell the roses, laugh and even be as creative, if not moreso, than my daughter. She is what I put all my life-force into now, not a what may or may not be in relation to a man. I keep my heart open though, for even though this story is still not complete, I look forward to whatever chapters lie ahead with eagerness and anticipation. My goals are to show my daughter that you can be independent and still be fine. Being female does not mean you have to hide behind a man or be in a relationship for contentment. In the past, at my most worst, I was seen as a clingy female who was self-absorbed in only one thing. This one relationship. That was all I focused on and all I ever mentioned. I never intended it to be that way. Perhaps in writing this, it still appears that way, however, I was once told by a teacher to write what you know. This is what I know.
By writing this, I feel finally a closure in regards to regrets of the past, mainly in regards to this man who was taken for granted. I thought he’d always be around. I was wrong and in accepting this fact, I was able to repair things on my end and leave the rest up to him. I can move forward now without having to bring back the horrible past except with a constant reminder of how not to be again. And that people are worth far more than just something that can be replaced. Because you never know when you could lose someone you love.
Not everything should be disposable. I see it far too much nowadays, the first time a trial comes up, the couple part. Divorce proceedings lasting longer than the married time. And the few in the past which I’ve spoken to expressed the same things I went through – but they wouldn’t admit blame in whatever (Even when it was obviously their faults!) or tell me why they stopped communicating. But in fact, every one of them had stopped talking.
People need to stop taking everything for granted and treat them moreso as treasures. When we stop feeling everything can be replaced for better, perhaps we can see that newer isn’t always better. Maybe better is what we make it – if we’re willing to work. Because nobody ever said a relationship was like a stroll in the park.
