Life is so unpredictably difficult, yet seemingly delicate.
We each have our own battles. Mine are too many to list. I don't leave them in the past. I carry them around with me as some sort of punishment, I guess. I'm not alone in that. Many people carry around their mistakes, their struggles, their thoughts. People battle with things that we cannot see. You have a really close friend that you see on a regular basis. You don't know his/her every thought. You don't know that he/she cries in a corner of their kitchen. You don't know that they are deathly afraid of rejection. You don't know that they have tried to overdose before. You don't know that they felt remorse the first time they went fishing and saw a fish bleed. You don't know that people picked on them in 1st grade. You don't know EVERY thing about any one. Period. You only know the battles that people are willing to share, the battles they have been able to face, defeat, or acknowledge as a lost battle.
Lately I have been thinking a lot about Robin Williams, or more specifically, the irony in his suicide. I've known people who have attempted suicide. Some failed, some succeeded. His suicide struck me as devastating. I, of course, did not know him personally. I envied him when he was alive. His wit, his sometimes questionable humor, his laugh, and his ability to bring smiles to people. I couldn't understand how someone so seemingly happy could want to be gone. Serving laughter to people has always seemed important to me. I had to read up on his life. I wanted to understand him better, or try to maybe see a glimpse of how he was seeing the world. I read articles where people called him selfish for committing suicide. (I want to come back to that last sentence). He battled addiction. It was first cocaine, and at a later time he battled with alcohol addiction. In the years before his death, reports say he was different. The autopsy reported that he suffered from Lewy body dementia. He was said to have been misdiagnosed with early signs of Parkinson's (while still alive). I read up on Lewy Body dementia. It's quite scary. Paranoia, insomnia, delusions, etc. There is absolutely no way of knowing what he was feeling, thinking, or seeing. People often associate depression and suicide to sadness. It's not always like that. Each of us is different, right? We are all built different, wired differently.
I want to go back to the reference sentence in the last paragraph and then I want to talk about depression and suicide...not as one. Separately. Because they are not necessarily related in every case as some people may think. Ok, so the sentence that I want to go back to was in some of the things I read on Williams that regarded his suicide as selfish. This is going to be a touchy subject. I may get some hate mail out of this. So, I want to step away from Robin Williams for a second and just focus on suicide being referred to as a selfish act (this is where the hate mail will stream from). people who are suicidal are not necessarily selfish. I'm just asking you to look at this from a slightly different perspective. Let's use a name for a personal connection to this perspective. We shall call him James. Let's say James lives what society calls a "normal" life. He works 8-5. He's middle class, married, has children, and close friends. He mows his yard twice a month, hates weed eating, and loves steak. He the "typical" American man. What people don't know about James is that his retirement took a dive. He has a problem child who he can't relate to. His wife works, but they rarely have time to enjoy each other as they once did. James worries about his future, his children, his future grandchildren, his property, his mortgage, his relationship with his wife, his relationship with God, the threshold in the basement that needs to be replaced, where he left the battery to his power drill, and why his wife insists on making spaghetti once a week. He has "normal" worries, right? Well, here's where it gets sticky. James worries about those things at work. He's losing focus at work, and has for months. He's losing focus on his relationship with God because of it too. He is balling all of those worries together and can't separate them anymore. They are one. One day he goes home and the dog has chewed through the back door. Great, another concern which requires immediate attention, therefore; leaving the other worries in his mind. Pushing them back. Next day, his daughter gets a 20 on a school project. His wife wants to sit down with her when James gets home. James is tired, and has all of these other worries, so he seems far away, disconnected, which appears to his wife as uncaring, which further pushes her away. They both lay awake at night pondering the past. Where did everything go wrong? Then one of the kids is throwing up, everything again get pushed back. These things pile up without the realization that they are even happening. His wife and kids have left for a soccer game and to visit her mother when James decides to fix that threshold in the basement. He goes down to get his power drill and remembers again, about the missing battery. That's it. It was that simple. All of his worries come rushing in. He sits down to collect his thoughts when all of his "what ifs" come rushing in. He's looking around the basement which suddenly causing an overwhelming concern of how did they accumulate all of this stuff? Why? How? He notices a box from when his father passed away last spring. He opens it to find his dad's cherished pistol. He holds the cold metal in his hand and suddenly realizes that it could all be over that fast. Simple. He puts the gun to his head feeling the cold barrel against his temple. For a moment his focus is on just the feel of the trigger and how he would have no stress, no worries in just a quick second. He has been sitting there for hours when he hears the door upstairs. He quickly puts the gun away, but not out of his mind. Over the next few months, James becomes obsessed with the thought of everything being done, over. There is no other escape to him. James sometimes closes his eyes and can still feel the icy barrel against his temple. James still goes to work, he still has his daily worries, he still wonders why his wife is being distant, why was his son disrespectful at dinner, why was spaghetti served again, why did the dog poo on the carpet...this things continue to overwhelm him. He becomes distant, empty, emotionless. These feelings lead him to paranoia, anxiety, he flies off the handle, self destruction. He starts drinking to keep himself from thinking about it. He slips whiskey in his coke. He thinks he's the only one that notices. He feels alone in keeping that secret. He feels alone even when surrounded by people. He can't keep the worries from overtaking his mind. He watches TV sipping his soda and whiskey, but he can't hear the television. He can't follow the script of the television show. His wife does see him, but hasn't been able to connect with him for some time, which has a boomerang effect because he thinks she doesn't care about any of HIS worries, even though he has not shared them with her. He can only keep returning his mind to the gun. Until one day his obsession with the glimpse of peace that the gun could offer overtakes him. James is alone one day in the basement again. Reader, you can finish that story yourself. Now let's take this back to the opening of this paragraph. Was James' suicide selfish? His thoughts and worries were his family, other people. He was in a dark hole that he couldn't escape. James became depressed (which I will touch on in a moment). He was overtaken by it. Some think that James is selfish because...what? He left his family? No. James could have quit his job, left his wife, and moved to Montana at anytime. The dark pit took him. His own thoughts turned to anxious paranoia. His thoughts turned him against himself. His obsession with the peace the gun could provide overtook him. To him, it was peace. An offer of peace from the darkness within himself. Suicide is an escape to some people. I probably shouldn't have added depression to my story, but I am not going back to alter it now. James was suicidal. He was consumed by worries, depression, work, (insert whatever you want) which led to his obsession with a way out, out of his own dark hole. Suicide for each person is different. Every single suicide is a choice to a way out. It's a way away from whatever is going on in that person's mind. We can't relate to that because each of our worries is different, as is our reaction to those worries. I knew someone once that was close to me that was suicidal. I asked her, "why would you do this to us?". She looked at me completely baffled and said, "I'm not doing this to any one, but myself. You don't understand what I see". I didn't. Not one of us completely knows or understands ANY one else completely. I personally do not think that suicide is a purposeful act of selfishness. It took me many years to decide that. It's a last resort for escape. It's my opinion, and you don't have to agree.
Moving on. Ok, so it's not as simple as one might think. Sadness isn't always depression, depression isn't always suicidal, and suicidal isn't always related to sadness. These three things can be very different. My dog died a few years back...I cried. I wasn't depressed, and I was not suicidal. I have not yet been able to let myself replace her, so what? I've said before, my life has not been butterflies and rainbows. I've had ups. I've had downs. I've had ups that were later decidedly downs. I've had downs that have had wonderful outcomes. Being a Christian, I know that is God. I know that when I let go, God's hand are under mine and He takes what I've been trying to carry alone. Now, do NOT misunderstand me. Just because someone is a Christian does not mean they are exempt. Christians get sad. Christians commit suicide. Christians battle with depression. No one is exempt. I want to focus on depression for this last paragraph. I'd like to tell you what it looks like. Thoughts of your life will overwhelm you. It's worse for others, depends on how you are wired. Agreed? We have all had battles of our own. Maybe your wife left you. Maybe you got fired and didn't know how you were going to put gas in your car. Maybe you've taken a shower to cry so that it would cover the sounds of you crying. Maybe you have sat in your car in an empty parking lot to just sit in silence. You have your own battles, past, present and future. They aren't the same as your neighbors. They aren't the same as your spouse's. You are unique in every aspect of life. That includes depression. It can be brought on by a multitude of things, such as, financial stress, work load, emotions, worries, deaths, silence, loneliness, etc. Depression is hard to understand from the outside, and even more so from the inside. It's not a feeling. It's not an emotion. It's a place. It's a dark place inside of you. A room, perhaps. It's a place your mind goes to. Depression is best described by me as a lonely room that your heart and mind go to. An empty room filled with only darkness. I once heard someone say that darkness was the basement of your mind. You crawl down the ladder and you don't know when you will ever climb the ladder again. It's a place. Depression can be covered by genuine laughter. You can have a happy day, or an hour in which you are enjoying company, but once alone again, you are back in the hole. You can have a house filled with children's laughter only to go take that warm shower and be in the hole of depression again. Depression doesn't mean you aren't a happy person. It means there is a door to a dark place that is open, and you don't know how to close it. People battling depression are really in a fight, a battle. They don't chose it. No one wants to be depressed and some people do not even know what it is that may have caused their bout with depression. It can happen for long periods of time, or short periods. You don't get to chose. It's not a person, it doesn't chose you. It's a place that you go mentally that can be scary, sad, or even cause fits of anger. You may wake up one day and realize that you haven't been in that dark place in a while. It's a daily battle for those who are going through depression. It's real. You can't just "get happy". I have a friend who battled with depression. Hers was brought on my illnesses and the fear of never becoming well. She would isolate herself, but play "happy" when around people. She's doing much better now. She battled for years. When you are depressed, you can feel like you can't let people in. They can't come in to your hole. You have to just be there by yourself.
I had something happen earlier today that inspired me to write this blog...I saw a video of a woman like me. She was getting her "Vinnies" (that was explained in a previous blog). I often wonder if I made the right choice by having the prophylactic double mastectomy. It's not the scars so much any more, as they are mostly faded away. It's that I watched my mom battle and lose to breast cancer. So, I became angry, and sad. Maybe it's the guilt of surviving when she didn't get that chance. Why did I have to get this gene mutation? I began to pray and then cry. I cry in the corner of my kitchen. I have a place between the stove and dishwasher where the cabinets meet. I've sat there before in very dark times in my life (this is not one of them - it's just my comfort place) As I sat there, I realized that I have overcome so many things in life, and God held my hand...sometimes he had to drag me. I realized how quickly someone can become sad, emotional. One little trigger could take anyone in to their personal depression hole. Don't misread this. I am good, not depressed, not worried, not any of those things...just thinking. For me blogging or writing letters is therapy. If it is something that I can't blog, I write a letter to myself, or God, or my mom. It's a release for me. I am going to end this here with helplines at the bottom. If any of you reading this ever need someone to talk to, but don't know where to go, or who would listen, there are people. There are people that don't have a clue who you are, but chose to work suicide helpline, or crisis line. May God put that one particular person there on the other end of the line just for you.
Be nice to people. Be nice to all people. You have no idea what their battles are.
National Suicide Prevention helpline 1-800-273-8255
Suicide Prevention/ Depression Hotline 1-630-482-9696
National Crisis Helpline 1-800-784-2433
Don't want to talk? You can text the Crisis text line at 741-741
If you have battled depression and would like to donate to the about hotlines go to www.spsamerica.org and click the donate button.
((hugs))
