'His last words should have been 'I love you.''

"Tell my wife that I love my daughters more than anything else in this world." Those were supposed to be the last words of the man I loved. He could barely speak them, already dizzy from the 27 pills he had taken to commit suicide.

Six hundred kilometers away and kneeling under the window sill in a Berlin hotel room - the only place with proper cell service - I called 112, the emergency number to get an ambulance to him.

It took three phone calls before I knew someone had reached him and that he was still alive. It gave me some relief, but as I drifted through the Berlin rush hour to a friend's flat, I felt wrapped in cotton wool - no noises or temperature made it through; I felt nothing.

Only a few thoughts seeped through my state of shock: he said "my wife".

With those words I knew he was referring to the woman that I had thought to be his ex-wife, although I knew they lived in the same but separate parts of the house "for the sake of their daughters."

But thinking about our relationship, I wondered, perhaps selfishly, whether the last words of the man you love (and who claims to love you, too) should be something more like "I love you." This is a thought I should have held on to in the following hours, days, months, years.

For the sake of a loved one

The first vital sign I got from him was an email he sent from his hospital bed. It said he felt caged, that he hated me for getting him there.

I wanted to find out more about what was wrong with him, so over the next few weeks, I read everything I could get my hands on about severe depression. I learned that people suffering with the condition have a hard time knowing what they want; that you should not end a relationship with them so as not to destabilize their surroundings. I also learned that people with mental illness might not be able to say what they feel for another person or might not even know how they really feel.

Everything I read emphasized what one must do to ensure the recovery of the person suffering with depression. But there was nothing about how those around them should cope - the literature all seemed to take for granted that they would simply continue to function for the sake of the person who had been willing to leave them behind.

'He couldn't stand my voice'

Over the next months, our relationship, already long distance, became even more distant. While we had written messages and talked on the phone often when our relationship started and saw each other about every two weeks, after his attempted suicide he couldn't stand my voice over the phone anymore. He also responded less frequently to my messages, which made me panic each time that he might have tried to take his own life again.

During the next six months, he finally decided to get therapy. I tried to be that partner, the one I had read about - not pushing him in any way. I have never excused myself for things as much as I did during that time for the stuff I wrote or what I said. I started to think that my own feelings must be wrong, that everything he felt was right and that I was too demanding or offensive, or whatever he thought I was.

And in the next year, his therapist turned him into a different person. Without even meeting me, she said I was "tough", basically giving him a permission to behave and act as he wanted, regardless of my feelings.

Whenever I stood up and demanded those things I considered to be part of a normal relationship - talking to each other, seeing each other - our relationship turned into a nightmare. We started fighting and didn't talk to each other again until I apologized - this was the phase that really hit me, and ultimately changed me.

'I was just an affair'

Time went on and he became "healthy" - at least to all those around him. He could go out and have fun with others. But not with me.

For me, whenever I asked whether we could talk on the phone or go to the theater together, he told me I was demanding too much and he felt stressed by that. As a consequence I backed away, fearing that I would increase his depression and make things worse again.

But by that time, I had slowly started to realize that we probably never had a relationship, that for him I was just an affair.

I was desperately looking for evidence that this wasn't true. I don't remember how often I asked him whether he was sure that he wanted me in his life (in whatever weird way) or whether he still loved me. He never answered that last question directly - a sign that should have been enough of an answer - but he never said I should go and leave him alone. And I relied and based my world, and our relationship, on the latter.

'He wasn't the man I once loved'

I finally ended our relationship on a day in June, two years after his attempted suicide. I was lying in his arms and feeling….nothing. The place that had been my favorite in the whole world, now didn't make me feel anything. And it was there, for the first time for a long time, that I told him exactly what was on my mind.

While I started to cry, he remained neutral. He understood, he said, and nodded. The next morning we went our separate ways.

Later I learned that while we were still a "couple" he had been meeting with a colleague from work. He had stayed at her place, he went to play golf with her, met her parents, enjoyed time in the sun - all things I would have loved to do with him, but was never allowed to.

The fact that he didn't understand why hearing all this hurt me so deeply, why (for the first time in our recent history) I got really angry and yelled at him, made me finally realize that he wasn't the man I once loved.

The man I had loved would have understood. He would have done anything to make me understand the "why?". The man he now was didn't care at all about anything I felt.

'I'll never be the same as I was'

Today, when I see that man, I still struggle. He still looks the same, he has the same mannerisms, the same soft voice, the same gestures, smells, the same growling laughter.

But then he opens his mouth and tells me what he thinks and it becomes obvious that the man in front of me is not the one that I loved. He is the most egocentric asshole on this planet. The man I loved did not survive the 27 pills, but died on that very day: May, 6th 2010.

Now, his former "wife" really is his ex-wife. And the former work colleague is just a distant friend. He decided to write a book about his former girlfriends. You can probably guess what I think about that.

For a long time, this story held me back. It held me back from being light-hearted. It held me back from feeling empathetic with friends telling me about their problems. It held me back from trusting that everything would be okay at some point. It held me back from feeling self-confident about my own emotions and needs.

By now, I think I've overcome most of that. But I still overanalyze things too much sometimes and overinterpret other people's actions. Still, I have reconciled with the idea that I'll never be the same as I was.

But I also see something positive in all of this. I know "hell" can have many dimensions, but I think by going through this one – there is nothing to come that I won't endure. And that's an encouraging thought that gives me strength and self-confidence every single day.