As you “struggled” to believe that I needed help you left me drowning in the deepest, darkest, waters you can’t even imagine. I want to know why it took you over ten years to decide an illness existed.
My grades inevitably suffered and State University and I was let go for a semester. Your reply was to stop paying my rent and utilities if I did not return home. I decided to get a job at Subway making sandwiches to keep my head above water. And struggled to pay my bills for months. I was also using a slight amount of money to pay the fee from the student therapist I was seeing…a graduate student.
You told me to my face that because of my being removed from school my future was uncertain. In fact you were so scared I would become a leach on your way of life I was informed I would receive no money or aid because you needed to “watch out for yourselves”. The idea to even ask for money had not entered my mind or even crossed my lips. I have never asked for money and will never.
I will skip what I deem as too personal of information about actions I took to cope with my depression and confusion. I look back at the extreme actions with shame about what I put the few people who stuck with me through. I wish I could say these instances stopped years ago.
Over the decade since I was told to simply wake up each day and “choose” to be happy. Why couldn’t I just choose. What a victim’s mentality I must have had. Without David I would be dead, plain and simple. A man who became my companion despite my mentality is still hard to hard to fathom at times.
His family knows very little of this information and I intend to keep it that way.
At some point in our lives I would like to know why it was you did not believe me for ten years. It doesn’t have to be tomorrow or next month or next year.
-Jennifer
*Art by Annie Wu
