Once I had this friend, whom I’ll call V. He and I had been pretty good friends for a few years and had always looked out for each other during tough times. V knew about my mental health problems and was very supportive as his own girlfriend had died a couple of years back which forced him to put everything into his work in order to fight off his depression.

We regularly took turns calling each other (usually from nine until midnight) and talked about whatever happened to fascinate us at the time. I really enjoyed V’s company as he was easy to get on with; had a great sense of humour; and was one of the most loyal, reliable and caring people I knew.

However, our friendship started heading south when I began to experience extremes of mood. I would be speaking to him on the phone and would suddenly start crying incessantly or become ecstatically happy for no apparent reason at all. V noticed this but, although his expressed his concerns, wasn’t much help as he was too wrapped up in his own troubles to do with his current girlfriend. They’d been having problems for a while and he was clearly upset about it. However, a short time afterwards, he started to obsess over it and it was all he would ever talk about. I tried offering suggestions to help him, but nothing seemed to work. Then one day he became really aggressive with me on the phone and said things like, ‘Have you forgotten to take your pills today?’ (even though he knew I wasn’t taking any) and , ‘Listen to yourself, you’re so miserable’ in response to my ever changing moods.

Even though I knew he was just angry with his girlfriend, I felt that there was no need for him to treat me this way. I found it cruel and insensitive of him, and I eventually wrote him an e-mail stating that I no longer wanted to be friends; but didn’t explain that it was due to him being so nasty. I just wrote that I was moving on with my life and felt that he was one of the people I needed to leave behind. He took it well. But in retrospect, I wish I’d had the courage to stand up for myself and tell him exactly how much his comments hurt me.

I’ve now rebuilt my social network and have friends who accept me for me, most of whom have some type of mental illness themselves. I’ve also recently been diagnosed with Manic Depression (Bi-Polar)-- with the encouragement of a friend who helped me realise that talking to my doctor about mood swings is nothing to be afraid of-- and am taking 500mg of Depakote per day.

Through this experience I’ve learnt that the people you think understand you the most, sometimes end up being the ones who don’t really know you at all.

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