It takes a celebrity...

Just a fair warning before read: This post is about suicide, it’s about personal attempts, it’s about my feelings on what might have been Robin Williams’ apparent suicide attempt, and it’s about my feelings towards society’s hypocrisy. This post may be triggering for some people and if it is, please, I BEG you do not read it. Just understand the basic point of it is that I think people are full of shit and if you’ve attempted suicide in the past and if you’re feeling pissed off about the shit people are saying now about how they’re so sorry about Williams’ passing but that it was selfish and/or has made them appreciate life more and how they’re going to be a better friend to their depressed friends… I fucking get it and I’m saying fuck you to them too.

I said my piece on Facebook yesterday about Williams’ passing in general. It hurt to lose such a gem but it wasn’ t my loss and it wasn’t the world’s loss. It was his family’s loss and it should end there but because he was a celebrity we’ve all been rocked by this cataclysmic event like it was an emotional explosion that no one saw coming except for the ones closest to its epicenter. We all have been affected by it in some way. Those of us who grew up with him on our screens are remembering the man with the whipped cream mask and the fat suit trying to get his children back because he loved them so much it hurt. We remember the man who traveled through heaven and hell to get his wife back because he loved her so much it hurt. We remember the man in the one hour photo lab who wanted a family so bad that it hurt. In all of this he was a man that hurt. In every comedy show he did, his eyes were sad while we worked so hard to make us laugh. Sometimes he hit us so bad in our funny bones that we fell over crying. Sometimes we watched, curious, as he ran around on that stage screaming and wondered, “is he okay?” We all know the answer to that now. He wasn’t okay. He was hurting and we know how he fixed that pain and for him it’s over. For his family it was probably a pain that they had to endure with him and it will be a pain they have to endure for a very long time.

I’ve lived a similar pain for as long as I can remember and I live it now, even as I write this. An acquaintance of mine wrote such a profound post earlier today about how deeply depression affects each one of us on the emotional and spiritual level that it felt as though I had written that post myself. No two experiences of depression are the same but the results are uncannily familiar. It leaves the person stripped, broken, seeing the world sometimes as if they’re living in a version of Silent Hill where everything is smoky and colorless and, at any moment, the air raid siren is going to toll and the executioner is going to appear and it will be over. The executioner is ourselves. We never know when it’s going to happen, if it’s going to happen, how it’s going to happen, or why. It could be a build up over days, weeks, months, years. It could be that one final bill too many went unpaid. It could be that the medicine stopped working. It could be the medicine was one adjustment too many. It could be just a bad fucking day. Or it was raining too long. But it happens sometimes and when it does that, “I’m here if you need me,” is useless because we do need you but we don’t have the energy or will to reach out. You were supposed to notice that we’ve stopped being us. As the friend who cared so much, you were supposed to see the change. You were supposed to check in. Does that seem unfair and a lot to ask of someone? It is. Which is why so many with depression push away their friends and family because we know the toll it takes on the people around us and we don’t want you to come down with us. But it’s up to you to fight for us if YOU really want us to be here. If you don’t, then don’t blame us for dying because it was our choice to do it and your choice not to call the police or take away the knife, the pills, the rope, or the gun that did the job. I can say this with absolutely no guilt because I had a friend who did do this for me once and I owe her my life.

When I was approximately sixteen years old or so I had a fight with my mother. I had already been depressed because I had broken up with my boyfriend a few months back and after several attempts to reconcile it was finally over and my rebound boyfriend and I were done too. My friends and I were on the outs because they didn’t want to deal with me. I had been sexually assaulted and my best friend had overdosed and died. That’s a lot for a kid at that age to deal with so my mother fighting with me over the fact that I had contacted my father was pretty horrid but just the same she did it anyway and I fell apart. I took an overdose of all of my medication I was on at the time went to school and hoped I’d be dead before the end of homeroom.

I went to the bathroom and started to feel sick and my friend at the time named Tracy saw that I looked messed up and she followed me in. She knew I had a problem with drugs and she asked me what I was on. We had an altercation where she tried to get into my pockets and she found the bottles and she saw that they had been filled the day before and were empty. 2 + 2… She screamed for help and the last thing I remember was collapsing in to her arms before I woke up in intensive care with acute renal failure. I learned that I had been clinically dead for several minutes and I was lucky to be alive and there was a possibility that I would have lasting brain damage from the incident. In the end my kidneys regained their function and I do have some lasting brain damage.

My mother essentially signed me over to the state after that and I never saw that girl again. I lost most of my formative years as a teenager to depression. I lost the ability to normally interact with people. I went home at 17 and a half and quickly left again. I lost most of my friends because of what I did. I was the girl who did that horrible selfish thing to everyone. Because no one understood… No one ever has.

Throughout my life I’ve lost several friends to suicide and I’ve contemplated it many more times. The most recent being this past November. I was a newly-wed in the throes of one of the worst depressions in recent memory and all I could think was, “I just want to die.” But I had no one besides my husband to reach for. My family had turned their back on me again and I had no one else that I trusted to turn to. I heard the, “If you need me, I’m here.” But I could barely lift my hand off the bed to wipe my tears when I cried. It all hurt inside so much. Why? The trigger was a fight with my mother but in the end it was just me in my own personal Silent Hill with the air raid sirens saying it was time again. I kept running and hiding from myself until they stopped by it was the hardest I’d ever fought in a long time. Much like that book, “How I stayed alive while my brain was trying to kill me,” I distracted myself with all that I could and I beat it but some of us never do.

Reading the posts about Robin Williams and how people say they care all of a sudden about their depressed friends and family members and how they’re suddenly wanting to be in tune with this disease pisses me off. I should be grateful but why does it take a tragedy and/or the death of a celebrity to make people open their fucking eyes? These people were hurting a year ago, a month ago, a week ago, and a day before he died but because it was someone we all liked it suddenly comes into the radar of your concern? What the fuck is that? You should have cared before that Uncle Lenny sits alone in his apartment drinking and crying quietly and needs a friend to talk to. You should have cared before that Debra who is usually quite talkative is suddenly not around much anymore and she’s suddenly giving all her shit away. You should have made it a priority to check in with your friend who is posting those kind of sad posts on Facebook/Twitter instead of going on about your shit. What kind of a dick are you that you’re gonna be that asshole when those people are gone someday that you show up at their funeral and say, “I remember when me and Lenny/Debra/(friend name) used to hang out… we were so close.” You’re a liar. It’s what you do now that matters. Not what you should have done. Be the friend now when they need it, not the friend you wish you were.

The fact that it takes the death of a celebrity to wake up a whole society to how intense depression is makes me sad for how selfish people have become. It makes me so very very sad and I’m glad that a huge part of me has learned to cope better because if I did rely on others the way I used to… I’d be dead a long time ago. Perhaps the fact that my last depressive episode forced me to see that I had no choice but to fight with no one to rescue me but myself made me realize that I did have that inner strength but I count myself one of the lucky ones. But I live in fear every day of the next round and if I will ever be that lucky again because I know there will be a next time. This is what it's like to live with a depressive illness whether is major depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, or otherwise. People like me need a strong support system and when we don't have it... it makes it that much harder to fight but some of us can and do. Am I saying that *I* need the support system? No. But if someone you know needs you, don't wait for them to ask... go to them and you make sure they know you're there and be there. Because if they look like they need you, then they do. Sometimes it's something as simple as sitting with them and watching a movie or just taking them out for coffee. Just knowing that someone cares is the best thing in the world for someone who feels like their world is falling apart. Because in that despair is a loneliness that is so pervasive that no words can ever describe. If I could never feel it again, I would give up my ability to make music. That's truly saying a lot. 

So please, people, save your platitudes and save your “I’m gonna’s” and “I should’s” and just do it. Because otherwise your words are just empty. To do that to a depressed person is just fucked. Don’t tell them what you’re gonna do. Just do it. It’ll go a world toward showing them you actually do care. Broken promises always lead to broken hearts and thinking on your worst possible moment of sadness... what have you done in that time? You've called out for help. Now imagine if your voice has been taken from you. You'd still want someone to come right? That's what depression is like. So put yourself in your friend or family member's place and just do it without being asked. When they're able to, they'll thank you for it. Trust me.