Dating in the dark...

A few weeks ago I wrote about *mouths the word* depression. It's been my most viewed blog post by far and I received lots of feedback, which makes a change from the radio silence that I'm used to. Almost everyone has been lovely and supportive and encouraging and they've said all sorts of nice things.
Thank you to everyone who has resisted the temptation to treat me like I'm Amanda Bynes . I'm not crazy (and neither is she). I was just ill, and now I'm better. Really, I'M FINE, and if typing “I'm fine” in capital letters doesn't make someone seem TOTALLY FINE then, honestly, I don't know what does.
So yes, almost everyone has been 'good people' about it all, but I did get one message that made me do a real-life LOL. It was this-

It was one of those messages that you have to read about 27 times before you can decide exactly how you feel about it. I wasn't angry, I wasn't upset, I wasn't painfully reminded of all the good times that we shared.

I felt amused.
I also think that I may have rolled my eyes so dramatically that I saw the front part of my own brain.

I was partly eye-rolling at myself, in disbelief that at one point in my life I actually wanted to be with this person, that I had actually cared about their bad day at work and had made mental notes of the foods that they didn't like.

Now, I can fully appreciate that, for some people, the end of a relationship drags them beneath the duvet of depression and for a long time they really struggle to pull themselves from beneath it, but that was not the case in this instance. A couple of Orange Wednesday's, a coupon-filled trip to Jamie's Italian and a few box sets does not a relationship make.
Did I have a little cry in the loo at work when I received a text saying “So sorry I haven't been in touch. I've kindof (Yep, he thought that kind of was one word) been seeing someone new, happened really fast. I'm really sorry x”?

Yes, I did.

During this period I also cried over the fact that I lost my favourite pen, that I was having a 'bad eyelash' day, that I was painfully desperate to speak to my dad, that the last two crumpets in the pack had gone a bit mouldy etc. They all seemed to feel equally painful and disastrous, so in many ways, the end of our thing warranted the same reaction as realising that I was out of shampoo after I'd already wet my hair in the shower.

Because, here's the twist, Mystery Man- I was depressed the WHOLE time that we dated.

The play-fighting, the eating on the floor with candles and a rug, the frustratingly weak and half-arsed back rubs, the kissing, the in-jokes; none of it made me feel any better in the slightest. So there.
The Big D turns you into a brilliant actor, for a while at least.

I used to get up and shower and apply make up to painfully swollen eyes and go to work and sign my emails off with 'kind regards' and get everything done and come home and crawl into bed at 6pm; not to watch a film or to read a book, but to lie there in the quiet waiting for the next day to show up, and kind of a bit hoping that it wouldn't.

No one knew about this for a long time and I sure as hell wasn't going to let on. I already felt like a freak for being in my early twenties and feeling anything other than totally pumped and buzzing for my next night out, so I resolved to carry on doing 'normal stuff' in a desperate bid to make myself normal.

Holding down a 9 to 5 job is normal, and apparently, so is dating a checked-shirt wearing guy who think that the Harlem Shake is the FUNNIEST THING TO EVER HAPPEN.

Depression is unrelenting misery and indifference. It's completely immune to the words, opinions and actions of others. Meeting someone who thought I was great didn't provide any rest bite, and so finding out that they didn't think I was great didn't really matter either.

So, in answer to your question, Mystery Man- No. No I did not get depressed because things didn't work out between us. I felt completely indifferent.

But now?

Well, now I feel fucking fantastic that they didn't work out.