When I was 22 or 23 I went out with this girl for about a year. She was one of those girls who was just the nicest person that you could meet. I work at a hospital and she just graduated from nursing. She was not the best looking girl but not bad looking at all. Just her personality was perfect for me. If you go looking for the perfect girl then you will never find her, she just does not exist. But sometimes you can find the girl who is perfect for you. Well that was her. She is the one that you can imagine growing old with and just loving each other.
Well the longer that we were together the harder it was becoming. She had suffered from depression her whole life. She has told me that she suffers from it but I just could not believe it. She was this really cool, happy go lucky girl. After about six months she started to really change. She was saying how she had never been so happy in her life as when she was with me. The problem was that she had stopped taking her medication in thinking that being with me is the substitute from taking her depression pills. Well then she would call in sick to work, not go out, get really emotional, stay in her dark basement for days on end. She would tell me that she stopped taking her pills because I made her so happy and it made me feel really good and I would encourage it. So she would spiral downwards then realize it and take some of her depression pills and level out. We were talking about moving in together but she was just so off and on that I had no clue where we were going. When she was on she was incredible but when she was off she was just depressing to be around. We then got into one big fight and she dropped her whole life and moved from Ontario out to British Columbia where her brother lived within a weeks notice.
We still kept in touch after that. She then started talking more personal to me about the struggles with having depression. She tried to avoid the conversation with me before or at least keep it to a bare minimum. My problem was that I was way too self absorbed that I thought that I was doing a good thing by telling her that if I make her happy to stop taking your pills and the real you will shine on through. So when she was out there I started to take it seriously and started to look into depression. Even I had been with her for almost a year I had never even bothered to google it once. Then I started to realize that I was never really helping her but hurting her. I should have been there for her and tried to help her. It was then that I had realized what I had truly lost out on. Then we started talking serious again but we were very far apart in distance. I went out and visited her for two weeks and it was like getting reunited with a long lost lover. We got talking about moving in with one another again and I was sure that it would have worked. The problem was that she was not willing to move back to Ontario as she pretty much ran away with her tail between her legs. I was not willing to move away from my friends and family to a strange place to start from scratch. After that we just drifted apart.
She has gone on to get married and have two children. I have been with my wife for over eight years and I love her deeply. We have a son who will be starting junior kindergarten in September. Truthfully life is grand and I would not change a thing. I do think though of the other girl as the one that got away. I will never know what could have been but I am very happy with my life now.
God rest his soul.
