When she could see it she stayed when she couldn't she left

The below was my first attempt at writing and then submitting it to The Mighty. No luck do far so here it is in full. Reveals a little of what led me here.

I’d had a knee operation, a replacement for my anterior cruciate ligament that had been shorn just over a year earlier due to sporting activities. It was painful and took time to rehabilitate with pain killers, physio-therapy and time. My then fiancée helped me through it all, every aspect she helped me with. The medication, the anti-thrombosis drugs that had to be injected, helping me move to places that my crutches could not take me, made my meals and assisted in washing me when showering just wasn’t possible. She also drove me to hospital when there was the threat of a clot in my leg and comforted me when I was in literal tears due to the pain. When I struggled to look after myself she looked after me. 

When I needed her the most she was there.

Almost exactly a year later when a mental condition threatened to take over me completely my then wife stopped being there.

I have had depression since a teenager and it has flared up during various points in my life. When my second great depression came and I eventually recognised it as such (or rather stopped ignoring what was happening to me), I told my wife. I opened up to her and it was she that took me to the doctors. It was she that listened to me and told me that she wasn’t going anywhere and she’d always be there. She told me this after I had related to her a particularly nasty episode that saw me overwhelmed by thoughts of suicide a few days before. I’ll never forget her holding my hand in that café that evening. Both of us were sipping overly sweet coconut hot chocolates as she looked me in the eye, held my gaze and made sure I understood that she wasn’t going anywhere I really felt that I could open up to her if I ever needed to. She would be there for me. Unfortunately, as the days and weeks carried on it was not to follow like the rehabilitation of my knee. The medication I was on, after the visit to the doctors, wasn’t quite working as well as I’d hoped and the suicidal thoughts weren’t going away. So I opened up to her, thinking it would help us both. 

I was also bouncing between no sleep and oversleeping and I was self-harming. Not a lot but enough for her to notice. As time went on and the family we had planned on starting wasn’t even close to coming to fruition she gradually began to mention me spending time away to try and recover. This went from going back to my parents to separating to finally her mentioning divorce. She wasn’t going to be there for very much longer. In fact she wasn’t going to be there at all. Everything I had feared when this illness was taking hold had come true. Those fears that deep down I knew were just that, fears, were now all too real. 

Now I don’t pretend that I was fun to live with and I know our intimacy had dropped. 

Being in the depths of a severe depression doesn’t make you feel very sexy, shall we say. 

But if we return to my earlier physical problem and my knee and how she treated me and now apply that scenario to this it all seems faintly ridiculous. I wish I could make her understand that now if I met her again. How her reaction to one mental condition made no sense when compared to her compassionate reaction to my physical one. I try not to think too much about it now and even when I do it all feels like a dream and one I am only now just waking up from.

The urge to do nothing at all

In the last 15-20 years I have always had this urge. I think it tends to be dependent on how stressful the months or years preceding this urge has been prior to having it. It meant that when I was ill, physical illness such as a cold or flu, I embraced it, the chance to hide away in bed, sleep and stay hidden with the excuse of being ill and contagious. 
'Sorry, can't go out I'm ill.' 
Easy. 
When it came to the mental illness, well I think I've covered that one before.
But the more I've thought about it the more it has become clearer to me and that is those urges were borne out of need for self care before a big depressive episode threatened to overwhelm. Which, of course, is exactly what it did. It has been on my mind because it is threatening now and I think, or rather I am hoping, that this is more down to the time of season, the colder wetter days, the darker evenings. That urge to hibernate away is always strong around now. But is it that or is it the other? That grey mass that hovers over the horizon and bodes towards a blanking out the blue sky. I'm just not sure and that is what worries me.

It rained and it rained but still he felt nothing

The rain is certainly coming down right now. Late at night it is kind of relaxing to me, especially if I don't have to wake up early the following morning. It is chilly and much darker in the late afternoon too. All the ingredients for the usual feelings of hiding away to hibernate. Over the summer as I mixed it in with my running I was starting to awaken a lot earlier to go to work and have carried it on since then. I like the earlier mornings as there are very few people around and it is  calmer. The only trouble is once I get back home and I have eaten breakfast I struggle to do things. I might exercise but that is about it. And then I get down on myself of not doing enough. Time used to be I would write or draw but the space for that and well, the ideas for those endeavors are low to none. I have writings to work on, again but after so much work on them before and them not getting anywhere it is hard to find the point to it all. The most I can do at the moment to fill that anxious void is to sort out my clothing. That's it. 
At the very least I have started reading more but inside it isn't enough. I feel like I am wasting this time away. But I don't what to do or what to really do about it. Couple all of this with my inner instinct hide away and when he weekend come now and I have nothing on I feel very happy indeed. I can't help but feel this will make things harder in the future when things do come up, future activities. And the less said about the upcoming festive season the better.
Will I ever give myself time off mentally? Or will I end up back to where I began with all of this, a grey numbness that almost broke me?

It was foggy but I could still see

Now that the nights are drawing in and the air is getting colder that all too familiar sense of panic and hibernation is starting to rise to the surface. some days it feels like I'm in a Pink Floyd video; a grey background with the occasional bright objects taking up the view. This sense of self comes every year, near enough without fail and you would think I would be used to it by now but well, I'm not. I have remedies for them and so far, the way my work schedule is, they are keeping it at bay. So far. 
The usual music, reading, movie, video games, hiding in bed, avoiding people if I don't need to go out and see them, so far these have helped and keep me stable. It is challenging though. None more so than the other week when the thought of my taking my life popped into my head. That is usually a sign of it coming back in  a big way when that happens. thankfully though it was a quick thought,  a flash of an idea rather than something that stuck around like it did before. But it was a warning. 
The question that does nag at me though is what will I do if it does come back?
Can I go through it all again?
That is a question I try to keep at bay as I don't think I will like the answer.