Comic 995 – “Dilemmas”

Errol: To be fair, it’s not all about Depression. I do keep myself super busy and that takes up a lot of energy! I can usually gauge how much energy I have to allocate to different projects. However, I’m not used to gauging emotional energy.

And although it’s not as drastic as the TARDIS maintaining a paradox, it did take a lot of energy maintaining the two relationships: a band and a friendship. And thus my reasoning that one had to go, and I chose the band.

Debs: First off, thank you so much to those of you who’ve approached us publicly and privately to express your support and share your thoughts. It’s really, really appreciated.

This comic, in many ways, is the crux of the arc. There is endless material out there on what it’s like to be depressed and how people should think of it, and how to help people with depression. And according to all those standards, there are certain things that you, as a friend supporting someone, are not supposed to do. You’re not supposed to blame problems on depression. You’re not supposed to put yourself first. You’re not supposed to walk away when it gets to be too much. Except those standards are impossible and unrealistic.

There was a comic that made the rounds on Facebook the other day, here. Viscerally, I love it because who wouldn’t want a safe nest fort thing and a friend to hang out with? But logically? I wouldn’t want to chain anyone to that fort, or to the darkness. That is tough in and of itself, and people are not omnipotent. Not even Errol, who has been crazy supportive through a lot of this.