on not being much better mentally in ten years time: atleast your body is in a state, where you know, you won't die the next hour or a day, so you have time to "deal" with your mind. I'm just trying to focus on something positive here. I wish you all the best.
For me only types of creativity i was interested in helped me with depression in high school. putting together "logical constructions" in a video game (very hard to explain) helped me but listening to music did not. creativity means something different to different people
It sounds as if you've been slightly premature in writing off the idea of asking a mutual friend about that important relationship of yours. You're right : they might not know. But on the other hand perhaps they do. Supposing you were to ask and they didn't know. Why not then ask them to be a go-between for you, and for them to find out the basic information of whether your old-friend wishes to have contact with you or no? In the event that the answer was a "no" maybe they'd also be able to make some tentative enquiries as to why. Don't be afraid of being an "imposition" or fearing that your request is somehow weird. Personally I'd be quite pleased if anyone approached me with such a request. I'd be both pleased that they'd shown trust in me, and pleased that I might be able to help. It's also anything but insignificant, and a resolution is obviously very important to you. It's quite natural for you to want a resolution, and IMO you *deserve* one - as anyone would in your situation. Without wishing to in any way apportion blame, the problem seems to stem from your old friend's apparent insistence on not furnishing you with an answer to even the most basic of questions - do they wish to have any more contact with you? It *seems* that in this respect they might be behaving slightly unreasonably. As such, the involvement of a mutual friend for help in resolving the situation has been perhaps necessitated by this (apparent) stubbornness rather than by anything odd about your wants or needs.