There’s a Catch-22 I had to face once I came out of depression: I had to learn to love myself before bringing others into my life, but the only way I knew how to love myself was bringing in others.

I had to learn to love myself before bringing others into my life. There isn’t a magic switch for going from depressed to not depressed. There is no “returning” back to normal. There is only finding a new normal, one that takes time and energy and isn’t at all guaranteed. Leaving depression is like escaping a black hole: seemingly impossible from within, optimistically improbable from the outside with the looming threat of relapsing into the gravity of it all.

I had to learn to love myself before bringing others into my life. See, there’s this false equivalency drawn between immense sadness and depression. Depression isn’t sadness. Depression is being the absence of happiness, trust, love. Depression is numbness, spending days in auto-pilot before having moments of lucidity that make you realize that you’re in a bleary-eyed, vicious cycle. Depression is being devoid of all but one thing: a voice degrading, demeaning, dehumanizing, demonizing any sense of self.

Depression wears you down until you believe there is nothing to lose because nothing is left. Until, of course, you lose depression. Then you have, what I came to rationalize as, a blank slate. A blank slate without the bad and with all the potential for good. A blank slate because I didn’t make many memories either because I wasn’t able to or I didn’t want to remember them because I lost the sense I was a unique person with something to offer to the world because I had no idea where to go next.

I had to learn to love myself before I brought others into my life, but I could only learn to love myself if I brought others into my life. I had parents who loved me, a family who loved me, friends who loved me; loving myself was never my job. Yet, with depression, not only do you lose the ability to love yourself but you lose the ability to believe anyone else could love you.

Many people don’t take the long-view in friendships. People aren’t usually receptive to the idea of being the angel investors to your life, lending you relationship capital hoping one day it’s going to pay dividends. Most people don’t like the idea of befriending a blank slate that has no promise of what it can result in.

I guess I lucked out when I came out of depression and met people who weren’t “most people.”

I knew a person who made once-lonely walks in Central Park less lonely. I befriended another who ate cupcakes with me in SoHo. I became close with a third who helped me acknowledge the strengths I’ve always held and will hold. I loved the fourth who stayed up with me to minimize my anxiety and make my flaws not matter.

I could only learn to love myself if I brought others into my life to teach me, but there’s a reason you need learn to love yourself before you can love others. I was naive in that time, ignorant to the burdens I placed on these people who got nothing in return; what does a blank slate have to offer? How can you expect yourself to know how to love after an extending period of time believing it could not be achieved? These people left when they realized I was not learning how to love myself but instead leaning on other people to do it for me.

Ultimately, misdirection in lieu of a solution. Something constructive, yet something that did not get to the root of the issue.

I had to learn to love myself before bringing others into my life, but the only way I knew how to love myself was bringing in others.