I have experienced a variety of low mood events in my life. The lowest of the low were ugly, with me defending with all my might the reasons why I should not stay alive. Verbalising them to anyone who would listen.

My ex reacted to them by questioning me about whether I knew how they impacted her, how difficult they were for her and what should she do when they were happening. I told her to let them burn out and trust that I would return. This was not something she was able to do and so she questioned me again about whether I knew how they impacted her. We never got to a point of her telling me how she was impacted, of her telling my that she found them difficult and it took her time to recover. It landed as I should change so that she didn’t have to deal with my fragile mental health.

I am equal parts happy and embarrassed that I changed to meet her needs. I am happy that I figured out a way to not sink into that low, not get swallowed whole by my passive death wish, but I dislike the reason why I did it. I didn’t do it for myself. I did it to stop her giving out to me that it was happening. It took a long time and a lot of work and I am in no way suggesting that this is a solution for anyone other than me, as I operate on an n=1 policy.

Recently a loved one had one of those bottomless pit lows and I felt the fall out from it. I tried to say “It affected me too, please give me time to deal with how it felt for me” but I am afraid it got filtered through a shame filter that so many in my generation had installed in childhood.

The Boy knows that when he has a hard time, I have a 2nd hand hard time. The reason he knows this is because I have told him. I did not tell him in order to shame him into not having a hard time, but to know that when he comes out the other side, I will also be coming out the other side.

Too often mental health problems are not mentioned, not discussed for fear of “setting someone off” or shaming the unwell person. This just adds to the secrecy, the shame. “I saw what happened” lands as “Don’t do it again” instead of “I see you, I noticed, knowing that you were in pain caused me pain”

I wonder now if I paid forward the experience I had with my ex, that of having my loved one perceive that I was shaming them in order to elicit change, or the experience I have with The Boy, that of knowing that his hard time is hard for me too and now we have a new opportunity to be kind to each other for we are both humans figuring out our way in this life.

I hope it was the latter. I fear it was the former.