How much?

How much mental illness can people take? How many posts on a blog? How many text messages asking for help, for comfort, for reassurance? How many sob filled phone calls? How many times can you show up with a tear stained face with nothing to offer but melancholy and pain? How many times can you cancel at the last minute because you realise you can't bring yourself to leave the house before people stop asking you places? How much depression can you show people before they stop trying to be sympathetic and get fed up with the drama?

Every time I want to tweet that I'm not doing ok, or post on Facebook that I'm not coping, or write a blog post about the darkness I worry about people's limits. I worry that I'm THAT whiner who just goes on and on about depression all the time. Who never has anything good to say. Who brings everyone down with her constant downers. I wonder how many eyes will roll. How many will want to unfollow or unfriend me. How many will try and offer me "helpful" advice about how I just need to learn to let things go, to let the bad things pass me by and not focus on them, just be happier. Because they just don't understand.

Just how much can people take? I wonder how many of the people who've come and gone from my life have been driven away by the darkness. Whether, if I'd just not talked about my struggles, they'd still be in my life. Will I eventually drive everyone away, when each of them reaches their threshold? I'm afraid that I'll be left, sitting alone in the darkness.