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Haig, Matt - Reasons to stay alive - 02 The blessings of friendship-love and love-love
Identifier
023183
Type of Spiritual Experience
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A description of the experience
Matt Haig - Reasons to stay alive – 02 The blessings of friendship-love and love-love
There was never a single moment, though, where I would have said - or felt - that I didn't love her. I loved her totally. Friendship-love and love-love. Philia and eros. I always had done. Though, of the two, that deep and total friendship-love turns out to be the most important. When the depression hit, Andrea was there for me.
She'd be kind to me and cross with me in all the right ways.
She was someone I could talk to, someone I could say anything to. Being with her was basically being with an outer version of myself.
The force and fury she'd once only displayed in arguments she now used to steer me better. She accompanied me on trips to doctors. She encouraged me to ring the right helplines. She got us to move into our own place.
She encouraged me to read, to write. She earned us money.
She gave us time.
She handled all the organisational side of my life, the stuff you need to do to tick over.
She filled in the blanks that worry and darkness had left in its wake. She was my mind-double. My life-sitter.
My literal other half when half of me had gone.
She covered for me, waiting patiently like a war wife, during my absence from myself.