I was, for 6 months, with a wonderful guy. I've never been emotionally intimate with anyone before, but I was with him.

He woke up one morning and didn't have romantic feelings for me anymore. We were apart for a month, and now he's pursuing a "non-serious" relationship with someone else. To be fair, giant gaping issues in his home lfe contributed to him being unable to keep up a serious and intimate relationship, as he explained it. Now, we're pursuing a close friendship.

It's thrown me back into that same depressed pit I clawed my way out of ages ago. I mean, Ive been suffering from depression off and on, treated reasonably successfully, and simultaneously dealth with OCD, bipolar disorder, intrusive thoughts/images/voices, and moderate anxiety. But I remember being in that hole a few years ago. I'd sit and do nothing because it wasn't worth getting up. I'd wake up in the mornign and burst into tears immediately at the revelation I hadn't died in my sleep. I'm not at that point yet, but I'm getting there.

I'm a freshman at a big-city, big-name liberal arts university. I love it here- everything was going so well. School has always been my constant- I am good at it. Good at writing papers, taking tests, concentrating on work- I always get good grades not even because i'm skilled in every subject (I'm not), but because i'm good at school and academic type stuff.

But now, I can barely focus. I can't get through the day. I lay on my bed in the middle of the day and fall asleep. I'm avoiding friends and I'm constantly near the teary breakdown point. And worst of all is that horrible physical depression ache, that one inside my chest. My whole body aches, I feel like I'm falling apart.

Few know about my depression or anything else- I put out an image of someone who has everything together. People joke that I'm "a strong independent woman" because one of the first things I said to that guy, when I was still afraid to trust him and wasn't planning on dating him, was "listen here. I'm a strong, independent woman, and I don't a man"… It's almost a myth in our social circle now… that was what he liked about me, that I didn't need him and I was my own person. And now, when I feel so depressed and so helpless and so achy, I feel like I can't go to anyone. I don't want anyone to think that the girl known for an independent attitude could be hurt this deeply by another person. I don't even want to beleive that- I didn't even trust my family this much, and I've never been hurt this much by another person. I don't typically trust people- emotional pain isn't something I suffer very often.

Throughout our relationship I constantly struggled with feelings of inferiority and substandardness. I have body image issues and I hated that I wasn't a thin beautiful model I felt like he deserved. I had no experience wiht a serious boyfriend and am still childishly squeamish regarding serious physical relations. I was probably a dreadful girlfried. But I was constantly convinced that one day, he'd wake up and realize I wasn't as wonderful and amazing as he insisted I was… and just when I began to let go of that anxiety, that's pretty much what he did.

Note- following paragraph includes self-harm stuff that could be a trigger for someone.

I can't stand this hurt. I used to cut myself- I'd love to do it again, to be honest, I mean, nobody will ever say it doesn't relieve that emotional pain and ache… but I dont' want to cut myself over another person… nobody should be worth harming my body to me, but i want this ache to go away. I am not a suicide risk, but to be perfectly honest I feel indifferent about death right now. I just want to lie her under my fleece blanket and disappear.

Formerly, feeling like this, experiencing anxiety or anything with regards to my mental health, I would go to him. And he would hold me and I wouldn't cry, but it felt so, so, safe with him holding me. I want that back.

My background includes few people taking care of me. I had a loving relationship with my family, but my dad moved away to work and my mother restructured our family such that I was her partner in raising the 4 smaller sisters (I'm the oldest of 5 girls). My mother's my best friend, and I love her to death, but she didn't take care of me, per se. We worked together cooperatively, with essentially equal authority. When I got together with him, I had to calm down and get accostumed to letting someone take care of me every once in a while. It felt so nice, but I was afraid I'd forget how to be so independent, and now I feel like I was right. I can't share this with my mother- she's wonderful, but sort of flighty and whimsical and emotional, not analytical like me, and she despises him for what he did to me. She doesn't understand that a fair portion of it was circumstance, and him hitting that downward spike on the cycle of ObsessedWithMyGirlfriend-HavingAGoodTime-DrySpellInTheRelationship-HavingAGoodTime-ObsessedWithMyGirlfriend at a really inopporutne time in his life when he couldnt deal with it. His intense, ocd fears of commitment probably didn't help. He really is a good guy, good character and good morals who did the best he could, but my mother doesn't see that- she's too busy being defensive of me hurting- so I can't discuss this with her.

I miss being high on life and even just plain functional. I want to sit here on my bed until it rots out from under me. I want to never speak aloud to anyone again and just slowly evaporate into the air. And even right now, that heavy, aching pain is sitting on my chest. I can't take this, I really can't. Someone hug me, even though that will make me automatically burst into tears.