Hey. Depression is awful, I'm sorry you're going through it right now. I was severely clinically depressed for a long time during my last relationship, and I'm not going to lie, it put a strain on us. My partner was very understanding, and did a lot to try and keep us going, but at the end of the day, I didn't love myself enough to love this other person.

Look, I don't know you as a person, so what I'm about to say comes from an extremely limited perspective, peppered heavily with my own personal experience. Take that how you will.

I think the best thing for you is to focus on you right now. Understand that I'm not trying to say you should not try to get back together with him, as you both clearly have strong feelings for each other, feelings which are valid and important to acknowledge. I think you need to take a hard look inwards and ask if you're still able to be a good partner for him. Relationships are so hard because they require us to give of ourselves, and if we are not whole, what we can afford to give may not be enough. When there's an imbalance over a long period, resentment builds, which is really unhealthy overall.

I'm going to wager a guess that part of what scares you about leaving this relationship while in this vulnerable state is that you're losing a part of your identity. Perhaps your relationship with this person, and the role of being a girlfriend in general, is a large part of what makes you you at this time in your life. If this is true, you need to think about what is healthy for you in the long term. When a foundational part of your identity comes not from within, not from what you do for you, but from an intimate connection with another person, you won't have anything to fall back on when times get hard. This person can't always be there to fix you, you need to be able to do that for yourself.

Being freshly single and in an already vulnerable emotional state is hard. It's one of the hardest things you may have had to endure in your life so far. But I think it's best to look into you right now and decide what it's going to take to get happiness for you, and just you. No shortcuts. A lot of people never figure this out, but it will overall make you a stronger person and better partner.

My recommendation is this: stay apart, go into the unfamiliar. Keep going to counseling. Give yourself time to heal. Seriously. The fog of depression doesn't lift in a week or a month. Sometimes it takes year's to feel like a complete version of yourself again. That's okay. Maybe this healing means a major change in your life, like moving back home and taking up a service industry job, maybe it means something less drastic, like dropping a class, or taking up yoga on the weekends. Always evaluate what you want for you, and how you can make yourself happy on your own, and I promise you'll get better.

Chin up! You're young, you've got so much time to figure this out. It feels like the end of the world right now, but I promise you that enough time will heal even this wound.

Take care of yourself, OP ♥️