Drinny FF
Chapter 16
The fear of falling in love when you're dealing with mental health struggles like depression and anxiety can be paralyzing. Love, in its essence, asks for vulnerability, trust, and openness—things that often feel impossible to offer when you're weighed down by your own mind. For someone battling depression, there's often a deep-seated worry that they're not enough, or worse, that they'll be a burden to the person they care about. Anxiety amplifies those fears, spinning endless "what if" scenarios: What if they don't understand your darker days? What if your mental health scares them away? What if they fall out of love with you when they see the real, unfiltered version of you? The constant uncertainty about your own emotional state makes the unpredictability of love even harder to bear. Every miscommunication can feel like a disaster, every distance like a rejection, because anxiety warps even the smallest things into sources of fear.
Depression complicates things further, making it hard to feel worthy of love in the first place. You might fear that your low moments will cast a shadow over the relationship, that your inability to always show up as your best self will eventually push the other person away. You wonder if you'll ever be able to give enough or love fully, when sometimes you can barely get through the day. The emotional energy that love demands can feel like too much, like one more thing you're bound to fail at. And yet, there's a longing for connection that persists, because even in the depths of mental health struggles, the human need for love and closeness never disappears.
In a way, love feels like a gamble—a chance at something beautiful, but with a risk that feels too high when you're already carrying the weight of mental illness. There's a fear that falling in love will leave you exposed and fragile, that if it falls apart, it will only confirm the insecurities that depression and anxiety whisper constantly in your ear. Opening yourself up to someone, knowing they might see parts of you that even you struggle to accept, feels like teetering on the edge of a cliff. There's always that haunting question: if you fall, will they catch you, or will they walk away, leaving you to pick up the pieces? The fear of being left with an even deeper sense of loneliness and rejection can be enough to keep your heart guarded, even though deep down, love is something you crave.
I've gotten so used to hiding it—the weight of the sadness, the anxiety that seems to gnaw at me from the inside. When I'm with Draco, it's easier to keep it all locked away, like a secret I don't plan on sharing. I don't feel the need to tell him what's really going on, not because I don't trust him, but because it feels pointless. What could he possibly say that would help? Draco's not one for comforting words, and I doubt he'd understand the way depression can pull me under, how anxiety twists everything until I can't think straight. It's not his problem anyway. I've learned to live with it, manage it on my own. The idea of letting him in, showing him this side of me, seems unnecessary. It would only complicate things, make him look at me differently, and I'm not sure I want that. It's easier this way—keeping the darkness to myself, letting him see only the parts of me that are put together. I don't need to share this burden with him. This is mine to carry.
So that's what I did. I kept him locked out. Told him to fuck off.
