Grazie

I grew up in a beautiful family. I'm the second of three - two brothers, one older, one younger. The kind of family that has always been there, in the good chapters of life and in the terrible ones.

And they are the people I pushed away.

When depression swallowed me, I did the thing that makes no sense from the outside and perfect sense from the inside: I progressively shut out exactly the people I needed most. I still don't fully know why. Maybe it was too painful to tell them I wasn't okay. Maybe I was afraid they wouldn't understand. Maybe I wanted to protect them. Maybe all of it at once, plus reasons I haven't found the words for yet.

Then, some time ago, I discovered something.

My mother and my older brother had started reading this blog. Not because I asked them to - I hadn't even told them it existed in any real way. They read it to know how I was doing. Because it was the only place where I was telling the truth.

They didn't tell me right away. I found out after a few articles.

Knowing it stopped me cold. It made me see, all at once, how little I had let them into the illness. How many times I had said no to an outstretched hand. And how much that must have hurt them. Watching a sister, a daughter, being swallowed by something invisible and devastating - watching her disappear a little more each day, stop smiling, stop lighting up - knowing she's not okay and not being allowed to do anything about it: that must have been horrible.

When you're ill, you can't see the pain of the people around you. And too often, the people we love most - the ones who would be there in a heartbeat - are precisely the ones we can't share the pain with. John Kirwan, the legendary All Blacks player and coach, explains this better than anyone in his book All Blacks Don't Cry - read it if you're fighting depression or anxiety, and read it if you love someone who is.

A few days ago I saw my older brother. We love each other very much; we talk often, but we see each other less than we should. I had already written to him that I was finally feeling better — and that I was so happy about it.

After we met, he sent me a message. He told me how glad he was to see me serene again. And then he added a sentence that left me without words.

He thanked me. For the effort I put in - every single day.

I stopped.

Nobody had ever thanked me for not giving up. For deciding, every day, for three years, that it was worth trying - despite the depression, the anxiety, the pain, the exhaustion, despite a hope that kept growing fainter that I would ever come back to life.

I had never thanked myself.

So today, I'm saying it. To myself, out loud, in my own language:

Grazie.

Because if I wake up today happy to still be here, it's because I didn't surrender when everything inside me was darkness.

And to the ones who read me in silence, back when silence was all I left them: I'm sorry. And thank you. You can stop reading in secret now - I'm here.