I use the term victim loosely, because I know none of the sufferers are victims, but survivors, and that is 100% true. But as I have recently experienced, when two teenagers with the same issues fall in love, it is a recipe for cataclysmic disaster.
I'll start at the beginning of our story.
Some girls spend their time dreaming about what their "perfect guy" would look like. Mine obviously changed the older I got, and at 17, I wanted the classic guy that every girl wants, but different. I wanted someone who would (obviously) love me unconditionally, who shared my passion for music and writing, who wasn't afraid of the opinions of others and would let nothing stand in the way of his dreams. Never did I expect to find him at my high school, let alone in this decade for that matter. But I did.
I was set up by a mutual friend, and little did I know that this boy was the very same one I had had a crush on in the fifth grade, and knew throughout middle school. He was a guru on the guitar and could immediately capture a room from the first chord. Immediately, we became the most unlikely of friends, and by about a month or so later, friendship has blossomed into love.
He fit the bill entirely, from sharing my passions to his opinionated nature, and you could tell he was in love just by looking at his face.
Sounds lovely, doesn't it? And it was. But at the same time, he was guarded. He would close off at times and isolate himself from me, before and during our relationship.
"I'll tell you about it later baby it's nothing," he would say. It was never nothing.
He never outright told me about his mental illness, but what with his mysterious weekly doctors appointments and the consumption of his sleeping pills and other drugs for mental health, it became obvious to me.
A lot of people my age would write him off as a weirdo, which they have, and walk away. But I wouldn't, and I didn't. I was privy to things like this myself, except I was much worse off than him. I've never went for help. It didn't scare me and he had never given up on me, so why should I give up on him?
A red flag should have appeared however, when one night, he'd texted me at 3 am feeling awful, and told me he was insecure about his "virgin status" and said if we didn't have sex by his birthday he would end it for himself. I thought he meant his life, and I got scared. I talked to him the rest of the night talking him out of it and at the end he said:
I made him promise me he'd take them and never do this again. He did. Things continued on.
Months passed and as his birthday drew nearer, I noticed his depression begin to surface, but he would hardly speak to me about it. The weekend before his birthday he had asked me over repeatedly, even I. The middle of the night on a day we had school off. My parents, being parents, wouldn't let me go see him. Sure enough, after those days and the day before his birthday, I was dumped. Never told why, but knew what the reason was.
He continued to act as though he cared about me, he got upset when we tried to talk about our issues, continuously has attempted to replace me and failed, even when he's had a new girlfriend, and every time he pushes me further away.
Just a month ago we had a fight in which, once again off of his medication, he screamed some things at me he didn't mean and told me that when his ex left him his depression worsened and he had to unfollow her and unfriend her.
We both have different forms of coping with our depression.
My way: I've been a recluse ever since he left me, and I'm always a recluse when depressed, but I still fight no matter how sad I am for what I love and believe in.
His way: he pushes away everyone he loves and those who could possibly love him. That's what he's doing to me and that's what he's done. He's pushed me so far that I don't know if we can ever fix what's happened, no matter how much we want to.
That's why I say victim, because in this case it is what we are. Love has been ripped from the both of us, and that is not something that can ever be fixed completely. We are both broken and bruised with no solution.
Just as everyone is.
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