For anyone who lives with someone who suffers from depression you would know the feeling of helplessness. Because truly, there is no written in stone process for helping you to help someone who suffers from this debilitating disease. It is all trial and error, guesswork, alot of investigative reading, and just plain doing nothing at all (except for just being). Watch and wait, that is really what we do. Watch for the signs of what period they are now in (you get pretty good at that after awhile), and wait for it to change over to another period of their cyle(hopefully the period won't last longer than you can deal with). Because that is what it is really, cycle after cycle of moods. Once you learn to recognize some of them, then you can learn what you need to do for both them and for you. Sometimes there is nothing you can do but quietly wait it out, hoping it will swing soon to somewhere that resembles calm. You keep asking yourself what can I do to help, but in reality there isn't much you can do but hang in there, throw in some smiles, a few hugs, some tender touches and then go about your daily routine as you normally would, with or without them.
You can't push, pull, holler or swear, cause it won't do any good anyway, and it will just pull you downward, so you just go on about your life and hope they opt to be a part of it sooner rather than later. Offer opinions when asked, but don't expect a miraculous "aha" moment to occur anytime soon if ever. Even though they hear what you say, they know its what they should do, the manic whirlwind going on in their heads just doesn't know how to let go.
Take the rare moments, hours, days, weeks (if you are lucky you might even get more) and enjoy them to there fullest, because you know they won't last forever, as depression is not something that they recover from, it is like an alcoholic, always lingering in the background, something that can break through to the surface at any time, with any little unforseen trigger. You do your best to keep those triggers at bay, but somehow they always seem to creep in there even with the careful planning you thought you had in place.
So heres hoping peace comes soon and stays a little longer this time.
