We go back, don't we? I don't even remember meeting you. Was it junior high, when we first started sitting up nights pondering my dark and hopeless existence? You told me no one would ever love me. You promised me the world would be better off without me. I almost let you win that game time and time again. Only God stopped us from ending our relationship by ending me. We can agree that He still had work for me, even while we debate whether that is a blessing or a curse.
Were you around when I sat by myself at recess in elementary school wondering what was so wrong with me and asking why people did not like me? I know our friend, Introversion, was there then, but I failed to understand that people disliked me because I did not like people all that much. Still, I think it was you who told me I was unlikeable, insisted I was different and I cannot remember not knowing those things about myself.
We might have been voted worst couple in high school, if such things were voted on. I floundered at love and friendships but you stuck by me all four years. People did try to break us up. They saw the signed of abuse, I think. The isolation. Somehow you made me angry that my parents loved me when other people did not. As if any remnant of human connection was a threat to you. Which is absurd, of course, because when were we closer than when I failed at love, just like you said I would? Every step I took towards the heights was another agony on the way back down.
I got help in college. Pills made it harder for you to get your claws into me. Easier for me to roll with life's punches. At first, I thought you might be gone for good. It cost me Ambition and Libido, but if I was not going to be a sexy CEO, I also was not going to be on an agoraphobe on disability.
Except I very nearly was, wasn't I? The pills could only keep us apart for a while. Having you around seems so natural that I did not even realize you had returned until I had turned my whole life sideways. Our pal, Panic Attacks, and you cost me my job ruined my finances and locked me in parents' basement. I could not even make a phone call. I was trapped and paralyzed and so sure it was not you because I had the pills. No one told me they would stop working.
I wish I could say you only tricked me that once, but that is not true, is it? No matter how well I know you, I am still likely to sit next to you for weeks completely unaware of why I feel irritable and empty.
Not today, though. I recognized you almost at once when you arrived yesterday like a cold drizzle interrupting a sunny afternoon. You have been dropping by a lot lately, but for short visits only. The doctors are not concerned. They know there are limits to their power.
So, today we may have a good cry. We will reminisce about my failures and examine my worst habits. Perhaps we will discuss unconceived children and other permanently interrupted dreams, reject solutions and lament the way the dirty dishes sink and the laundry hamper refuse to stay empty even for a minute. We will apologize to everyone who does not deserve my short temper and entertain unkind thoughts about people who probably do but who are spared by the sliver of self-control I retain, bolstered by my suspicion that I would be more miserable for giving them a piece of my mind than I am for keeping it.
Do not worry if you remember a prior engagement or get called to a family emergency. I will not complain. I know you would stay if you could. I know you will be back. Isn't that what old friend do?
