People Like Me

Last week, when I mentioned my struggle with depression, I also mentioned how a friend of mine said that depression seems to follow people like me around.

What are “people like me”?

People who think too much and feel too much. Well, OK, if you think that sounds a little judgmental and isn’t helpful to “people like me”, let me rephrase that…people who think and feel intensely and deeply. I’ll talk about the thinking part next week. For today I want to talk about the feeling.

Any of my friends who knew me in grade school will tell you that I’ve been an incurable romantic since first grade. My friend Sally from college told me once that I fall in love too easily. When I was in my late 20s, I had a girl break up with me because I felt more deeply for her than she was ready for (don’t worry, we’re still good friends). I’m convinced that the problems I had with one girl in my early 20s were because I felt more deeply for her than she wanted me to, while she still had other irons in the fire.

I replay the tapes (yeah, I know…what’s a tape) of situations from my teens and twenties, and ask myself, “What if I had dealt with this differently? How did I miss that social cue? Suppose I’d said this instead of that?” Some of you might say that this goes under thinking rather than feeling. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a gray area. Maybe it’s thinking about my feelings.

Of course, this could also be called “having a great imagination”, or being able to see alternate outcomes to things I’ve gone through. And this definitely helps when I write my stories. But sometimes it just gets you “stuck.”

And it’s not always about me. Sometimes it’s about others. It’s about other people…other wonderful people…that I want things for, and my disappointment that they don’t have or never got them. For example, there’s a woman I worked with many years ago who was one of the nicest people I knew, but didn’t have anyone…that I knew of. I imagined a secret love life for her that was wilder than anything you would’ve thought about her from seeing her at work. Many years later, she’s still never had anyone…that I know of…and I think it’s kind of unfair that someone that nice never got anyone to tell her just how nice she was.

But you know something…even in that, maybe it is about me…and how much I would enjoy being told that someone thought I was wonderful…even many years later. I remember how blown away I was to find out that the younger sister of a girl I had a crush on in high school actually had a crush on me. 40-odd years later, and with both of us happily married to other people, I was walking on air! Maybe I think that other people are this way too…when they’re not. And I’ve embarrassed myself more than once...and even gotten seriously burned...when I clumsily tried to pay a compliment that I’d be thrilled to get, but wasn’t received well at all.

But, going back to the woman I worked with, maybe that’s my issue…my issue as the incurable romantic…as the person who feels deeply…and not hers. Maybe it’s my issue as the person who feels incredibly deeply…and didn’t understand until very recently that not everyone else feels that deeply, wants to feel that deeply…or wants to know that I feel deeply about or for them…and not hers. Maybe she’s perfectly happy, while I’m sad for her.

And as I said a few weeks ago, maybe knowing this means that I can let go of my desire to make things right that I screwed up in the past.

And make me right in the present.