🌑 December 17 🌕 (Erin Jean Warde)

December 17 will always be one of the hardest days of my life, as it is the anniversary of my sister’s death. Today, I want to be vulnerable with you about the feelings that surfaced.

🌑 December 17 🌕

December 17 will always be one of the hardest days of my life, as it is the anniversary of my sister’s death. Today, I want to be vulnerable with you about the feelings that surfaced.

Yesterday was a day of profound loneliness, grief, and depression. Yes, a lot of this was caused by the day and all that it holds, but it was more.

I’m not a person who is hungry for a romantic relationship. I desire one, and I’d like to one day get married if I find the right person, but I don’t chase romantic relationships like I did when I was younger. As I’ve aged I’ve realized I only want to welcome a romantic relationship into my life if it adds to the joy I have already built by myself. (Within reason… I know relationships are not joy 100% of the time, but a relationship would need to add more joy than toxicity into my life to be worth the time and energy spent.) This was an important discernment for me, after realizing I kept ending up in romantic relationships that only drained me. I think a large part of that was the hunger to just be in a romantic relationship at any cost, because “time is running out” and all the other toxic messages that sent me into harmful relationships.

Instead of remaining inside that hunger, I started working on myself—namely, I got sober from alcohol—and found within myself a deep friendship, companionship, and fullness I had always sought to find outside of myself. It was a profound reconciliation with myself. Now, I enjoy being alone, something I never would have said when drinking. Sobriety introduced me into the core of myself, and when I looked at her with sober eyes, I was able to befriend her for the first time. In befriending myself, I realized my life did not need to be “completed” by a relationship. So sobriety liberated me from the hunger for a relationship. It didn’t take away the desire for a relationship, but it took away the part of me that thought I needed a relationship at all costs, the part of me that thought relationships were worth the ultimate price of the very joy I have worked so hard to cultivate.

And yet, there are still times when I struggle with being single, because of the intense loneliness it requires and instills. I also know that the love I seek isn’t entirely relegated to romance, but it is relegated to a type of relationship I struggle to feel like I have. Or maybe better put: a type of relationship I don’t feel like I have when I am in the deep hole of depression.

What I yearn for are relationships—of every type—in which I do not have to ask to be loved. When you’re alone, the burden of receiving care feels like it remains solely on you. “It’s okay to ask for help.” I know that. But what I desperately need, even in friendships, are relationships in which I do not always have to ask others to please remember me, to please care for me, to please love me.

When I am in the deepest hole of depression, I struggle so deeply with asking for help, because I don’t have the capacity. I am so energy drained by the effects of the grief and depression that I struggle in ways I can’t describe to ask for support. The fact that I know I have to ask for love in order to receive it weighs so deeply on me that I can’t ask; it exacerbates the loneliness that doubles down on the depression and grief. It’s a spiral I always get stuck in, when I am in that deep hole of depression—and yesterday, on December 17, I awoke in that hole, clamoring to survive it.

And I just needed a moment in my life when—deeply needing love and care—I didn’t have to ask someone to please love and care for me. I needed to feel like I was worthy of being cared for without asking. I needed to feel like I was worthy of being remembered without asking. I needed to feel like I was worthy of being loved without asking.

I struggle with having friendships where we never see each other. And believe me, on one level, I get it. I also struggle to have time. I’m busy too. Intellectually, I “know what’s going on,” but when I am in the deep hole of depression, I think about how much I wish someone would miss me. I’m often the person who says, “we should hang out!” and I just desperately want people who initiate us spending time together. I don’t always want to have to be the one to say, “we should hang out!” I want my friends to remember me, to think “I should see if Erin is free,” simply because they miss my presence.

I want people in my life who wish to spend time with me of their own volition.
I want people in my life who love & care for me of their own volition.
I want people in my life who remember me of their own volition.

I’m not saying I do not ever receive this. Nor am I saying I am perfect at this myself. I do believe grace precedes and follows us. I’m just aware of the growing, gnawing pain of how much of my care, love, and time spent with others relies on me having the energy to say, “we should hang out.”

Because when I fall into that deep hole of depression, I can’t say that. I can’t ask for care. I can’t ask for love. I just…. don’t have it in me, especially on big grief days, when it feels like every breath is sucked into the vortex of death and pain. On those days, feeding myself feels like a miracle.

And it isn’t like there’s someone who lives with me, someone who can find me screaming and crying in my bed. There isn’t anyone who sees me sobbing in between Zoom calls, even just when I have a 15 minute break, or how I have to clean up my makeup upwards of 3 times throughout the day, because I’ve been able to conveniently pause my grief long enough to hop on a call.

I live in the paradox of loving the fact that I do not have roommates, but also recognizing that no one is around me enough to notice the small signs of my depression; I don’t know if there is anyone in my life who knows me well enough to know when I am deeply depressed, which doubles down on my loneliness. I think I put on a brave face all too well, because cultivating and curating that mask has been my survival for my whole life.

Maybe I just wish someone knew me well enough, spent enough time with me, cared about me enough to notice the small signs of my depression. Maybe if I had someone in my life like this they’d notice, and offer me care and love without me having to ask.

I’m also aware that so, so many of my dear friendships have been cultivated digitally. I don’t expect a text or social media friend to be able to know these signs, because how could they? And yet, the need for deeper relationships, deeper friendships, is still present within me. But I feel like I don’t know how to cultivate them. This is the spiral.

I don’t hold anything against anyone I know, so please don’t take this personally—I know the onus falls on me to ask for the help I need. I cannot expect people to read my mind. I know we’re all so busy, myself included. And I know that I am not a perfect friend. So I don’t hold these feelings with anger, but I do hold this longing for love and care I don’t have to ask for all the same. Two things can be true. Today I’m trying to find the strength to say it, but I offer this without malice. I offer this because maybe someone else has felt the same way. Maybe just knowing we aren’t alone when we ask these questions is one step for us out of the hole of depression.

I was trying to think of something less painful to share today, especially as this is my last newsletter before I take a two week break to celebrate the holidays with my mom in Alabama, and then take some time for rest all to myself. But at the end of the day, I try to write from my heart—and my heart has little else to say.

The holidays are a hard time for many. There is plenty of holly jolly around us, maybe a newsletter about deep pain can help balance out the messages we receive during this season, especially for those of us so stuck in the hole of depression that we can’t make out the carols booming from the loud speakers, because we’re down a little too deep to make out the words.

I know there is joy still left to be found. I will always try to find it, because I know joy is my life force and hope is my salvation. But I’m not going to pretend this joy and hope is easily found for me. No, it is a deliberate search, an art for crafting something out of nothing, a prayer yelled from the Pit.

I pray you receive joy and hope this season, even if they only feel like tools for survival.
I pray you receive love and care in your life—that you are remembered.
I pray you are thrown a rope out of any holes of depression where you might find yourself.
And in the depths of any depression you might experience, may you remember—even when it feels impossible to imagine because the walls of your pain seem to be closing in—that you are not alone, you can survive this, and you are worthy of seeing tomorrow.

With love & care,
EJW

P.S. Thank you to the 2 people who texted me yesterday. You both offered me inklings of hope that helped me navigate the pain of the day. Thank you so much. I have not forgotten you. <3

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