Hello.

This is not exclusively about me, but also the precious lady I've been kinda dating for a few months. I'm saying "kinda", because we have never physically met. Though we don't live too far from eachother, Corona makes it impossible to meet up since it's different countries. Some details I have to leave out for privacy and potential dox reasons. I'm sorry if this is unstructured, I'm writing this down for the first time.

I met her around March this year and found her utterly charming. Among many other things, she has a lovely voice, a very unique humour and a creative side I'd love to see blossom. She made it clear right away she suffers from what can only be described as an interlinked construct of different mental issues. Mainly depression, but also social anxiety and a type of personality disorder. She had a small job that gave her a bit of income and let her interact with people. It was a big step for her and I supported her as well as I could, giving her advice and things started to look up. During May/June we started to slowly unravel our feelings for eachother. We talked about if she's able to commit to a full relationship and ended up agreeing to what was basically talking a lot and getting to know eachother, but not doing anything "too lewd". Up until the end of October we kept a pretty steady and wonderful flow of conversations going, even if she said she was unable to do things with me one on one as video/voice calls. So nearly all our conversations were in text form, except for a few times, often for many hours and daily. It was a way to share quality time with eachother and we were happy with that. I offered other ways too, but she said that's not possible for her for now and I made it clear that can wait.

Sadly, later in the summer some problems arose at her job, she was unable to go back and continue, she quit. I told her I was going to stay with her, support her however I can. But her situation deteriorated. She lives with her family, which either does not care about her well-being or actively cause issues. They are the main source of stress for her. Money was often an issue (several times because her family spent it unnecessarily), so I ended up giving her a few bucks a month, even just 50 was enough to keep her afloat with food. It took her long to accept this, but I kept reassuring her that it's fine and I make more than enough, plus she won't have to pay me back and also that I want to help her be able to live on her own at some point.

She has a therapist and gets medication, but the medication is apparently not always working properly and she went through different types already. Unfortunately she doesn't particularly like her therapist and feels not treated well enough. She has been trying to get governmental help for a few months now, but her social worker has not given her a final answer on if and when she's going to get any. She has to wait several more weeks. Particularly moving out of her family's house and into some kind of women help house would be the best idea in our opinion. She also mentioned going in-patient before, but that ended up doing more harm than good according to her.

In mid November, from one day to the other, her situation dramatically worsened and she became the most depressed and suicidal she has been in a very long time (before I knew her). Unfortunately this also lead to some fights or at least she reacted in an aggressive way to some of the things I wrote. I understand there can be negative outlashes when somebody suffers from depression, so I tried to be as composed as possible about it, not letting it escalate. Later on she told me about her previous suicide attempt when she was younger. I made it clear that I'm happy she is still here with me, and that I'm sorry she had to go through all these things. I tried to make her understand that her emotions are valid and important to me, that she's no burden to me. I want to accept her at the strongest just as at her weakest. I see her mental issues more as a layer on top of her wonderful core, it does not make her the person that I like so much.

In December it got even worse, where at some point she hadn't talked with me for five days, but was active with other people, just in a much more "silly" way I guess you can say. I didn't find out about this until two days ago. She reserves personal talk about her feelings for me and the few very close friends she has. Later she told me she started to feel anxious when it came to interacting with me. She's unsure about her future and if the government help will come. On Sunday she basically told me, she thinks she should stop "us", since from her perspective she's making me suffer. She's also afraid of becoming dependent on me, emotionally and financially (she didn't want any financial support the last two months, so I didn't push it). Before that she repeatedly said she's afraid of losing me, eventhough I never said I want to let go of her.

I have not always acted the best way. For me the biggest struggle is not being able to communicate with her. I told her it's difficult for me when I don't hear from her for days, this was especially the case after she made suicidal comments. I asked her to please tell me when she thinks she's not going to be around for some time and sometimes that worked, sometimes it didn't with her vanishing for two or three days. When she told me she was going to be away, I left her alone until she talked me up again and I was fine with that. Eventhough I tried not to force her to do stuff with me, I brought it up when I noticed she was isolating herself more from me.

I want to spend time with her, be there for her and have an open ear whenever she needs somebody to talk to. And we used to have that for several months, this wonderful baseline interaction, which nearly abruptly stopped in November. I don't want to give up on her, but I'm afraid she already has. It's starting to become apparently taxing on both of us. I don't know anymore what the best course of action is and how I can help her. Plus, if I'm being honest, the last 6 or so weeks were very difficult and at times hurtful for me too. Luckily it's the holidays and I don't have to work this week.

Right now I asked her for a day or two off, where I can just reflect and think about everything, especially her last statement. I'm at the point where I'm not sure if I'm being an egoistic asshole for staying with her or stopping being with her. In her words, I was never egoistical and it's wonderful I stuck with her this long. But I'm afraid she says that only because she wants to put the blame on herself, as she tried to do with other things in the past, eventhough she's obviously not to be blamed for her mental issues.

Thank you for reading so much.

Please tell me if there is anything else you need to know.