Hi Hilary, first sorry for what I'm about to dump on you - but I have no one else, and you've shared before, so on some level perhaps, you may understand. For the last 12 years, I've suffered through depression. It got crippling for a few years, but I kept pushing past it, and after that I figured I had a pretty good handle of it, even if it was lurking in the background like some mountain. Well, that mountain's grown, and the shadow dark. Most of the time, I choose to ignore it. Some days, 1/3

Some days, the only way I push forward is telling myself tomorrow can’t suck quite as much. Every day, I lie to myself, pushing forward. As I get older, still unaccomplished, still alone, still invisible, I know that my perhaps my parents and sister may be upset about my death, may mourn it a bit - but give them a year, they’ll be okay. Human beings adapt and change. And while I believe I will never take my own life actively, I can’t say the same for that passive carelessness. 2/3     

All this to say - despite the fact that I seem invisible in the CS fandom, no matter who I talk to/how much I write, online, and IRL I’m constantly overlooked. I do my best to stand out but perhaps some people just are natural wallpapers. I digress - the point is I wanted to thank you and everyone else in the fandom. CS itself, while started as a a cute little OTP, became something I lived through - the idea that two people could love each other that much. 3/3+1            

 Even if I don’t know what thats like, to be someone’s priority, Emma and Killian, brought to life by A&E and given so much depth by all of you has been wonderful. Thank you all. P/S - Don't worry about how long it takes before you see this message, the point of it was to let it out and give gratitude. Cheers, and all the best. 3+1/3+1             

Honey.

First of all, come here and let me hug you for a long time, okay?

If you ever want to come off anon and talk to me privately on messaging, I have done that for a lot of people before and I’d be happy to do it for you. In the face of what has been some pretty awful darkness for me too, and my own overwhelming anxiety and fear about the state of things, I’ve decided that the only way I am going to stay sane at all is to try to be kinder and more open-minded and trying to do whatever I can, so yes. Please, please do message me privately if you need someone to talk to ASAP -- I’m usually around or checking my phone, even if time difference is a thing (I’m not sure where you are, but yeah.)

I know exactly how you feel because I’m currently in that same place. I’ve struggled with depression for my entire adult life, and I keep thinking that as a so-called smart person, I should be able to make this stop happening. I should be able to fix it. I had a breakdown last night over that very thing, and how bad my anxiety has been, and how afraid I am of things never working out and everything else shitty and scary and awful that is happening in the world right now. I have also had that thought that if I just happened to go to sleep and not wake up, it wouldn’t be terrible, and nobody would miss me all that much.

I’ve had to deal with that kind of thinking by reminding myself that while it would be HUGELY tempting to just switch myself off for five years and go away, that isn’t how death works. You can’t switch back on when you want to; nobody has invented long-term hibernation or cryo-stasis yet. That is just science fiction. You still get only one chance at life, as dumb and terrible and fucked up as it is. And I see a picture of someplace I want to go, or think about someone I want to see or talk to, or yes, an episode of TV or a character or a ship that I want to see more of, and I realize I do still want to live and keep trying. I think CS and OUAT has been that special thing for many of us, and with the chatter about it maybe ending after this season, I can understand how stressful that is. I’ve drifted away from the show overall, but I will always, ALWAYS be grateful for the people it brought into my life, and the ways in which it’s changed me as a person. I honestly think many people would relate to your feeling of living through it, and being able to experience that kind of love vicariously.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how much human beings love stories, and always have. How in the course of reading a book, or watching a two-hour movie, or forty minutes of television a week, you can identify so completely with people who aren’t real. I think that empathy and that ability to do something like cry at the sad parts in a movie, to feel the pain of these people who haven’t existed and haven’t actually felt that pain, is one of the truest and deepest things that makes us human, and which gives me any hope at all for the future. Likewise, the way we can be so truly happy for these people who haven’t actually existed and who haven’t actually felt that happiness -- that ability to recognize, to connect, to again, do this for people who aren’t real is amazing.

If only, if only, we could be better as a species about extending that kind of empathy and understanding to the people around us who are real, who are feeling that pain, and who do really need our help. Fiction is an absolutely marvelous invention, but I wish humanity could be so much better when it comes to the non-fiction side of things. That we could understand what stories are doing to us, and what they’re trying to do for our own real life.

In the end, I have to remind myself that nobody would blame me if my head was physically smashed open, and I couldn’t THINK it back to being whole. I do my best to comfort and help and tell people it won’t last forever, and I likewise really struggle to believe it myself, that anything I do matters, that I will ever be off this awful roller coaster of a mental illness that has taken most of the last decade of my life (as I said, my entire adult life, and before that as well). But as I have said before, for better or worse, I’m still here, I see you, and you matter to me. I am so terribly sorry you don’t have anyone else to say this to, but I hear you. I hear you. I hear you. And your pain hurts me.

Come here, and we can sit together for a while.

It might not be much, but at least it’s something.