Once in a while a complete stranger dies, and something
shocking occurs within me. I feel
loss. Not just the sadness of
human life being lost, but indeed personal loss. I will miss this stranger. I felt it when Phillip Seymour Hoffman died, and now again
today I feel it as the news rings of Robin Williams taking his own life. I feel small bits of what those who
actually knew him must feel times a million. I feel loss.
Part of me wants to count it as silly. I can hear other, more cynical voices making fun of me. My mind produces made up comments from
this mysterious “them” about how stupid it is, or celebrity worship blah blah
blah. Only, anyone who knows me knows
that I am not one to worship celebrity.
And so it is that I find myself, with age, letting my heart just feel
what it feels, and not letting the stupidity of cynicism quash my
feelings. After a decade and a
half of depression crushing my heart I’ll take whatever feelings I can get. So, again, I feel loss. I feel angry too, angry that Robin
Williams quit. I know the pain of
severe depression. It soaked my
life, and stole my heart and soul, and tortured me every second of every day. I have been well now for a couple of
years, and yet I still battle the aftershocks, the thoughts, lies that a mind
twisted by pain have come to believe.
Often, God reaches for me with love and tenderness but I recoil as a dog
who was beaten one too many times to even stop and think that the outreaching
could be anything other than more pain.
I know the pain, but I am still here.
Why, Robin?
Why? People love you. Depression, statistically, ends. It is almost certain to cease. Just keep going. Now it is too late. We cannot reach you anymore. If only you could see the world’s
reaction, their sadness.
How many follow the same pattern and yet have no one or very
few to lament them? Robin Williams death has brought back to my heart the
desire to reach out to my brothers and sisters who are hurting. I have believed too many lies. Lies that no one cares, or that such a
thing means I should I stop trying.
So what if no one cares.
You don’t fight the fights you can win. You fight the fights that need fighting, and this is a fight
for the ages, for you see depression is not rare. It will touch every life, whether they know it or not. Unless you don’t love anyone, and you
never struggle, it WILL touch your life, knowingly or not.
The thought I keep having when I think about Robin Williams is,
“Do people STILL think depression is NOT real? Do they now get the reality of depression? Do they think Robin violently choked
the life out of himself for no good reason? For something he just made up? Can they still think it?”
I hope not. If
anything good can come out of this pile of crap news, this darkness, I hope it
is that more hearts will change, that people who once held the belief that
those who were depressed were just weak or needed to just get over it and think
happy thoughts will be stopped dead in their tracks and finally see that this
darkness is real and is not a decision.
Taking of life is a decision.
The darkness is not.
I think of how there is this trick to parenting when it
comes to how much you shelter your children. Some parents take every measure to hide their children’s
eyes and minds to the world. They
think they are doing them a favor.
The problem is that sheltering one day cracks, for you cannot hide the
reality of the other side of life forever. That perfect childhood becomes the very weapon of
destruction as an adult, for that mind is not prepared. The world changes, cracks, as to where
the mind of a child who was raised with measures of reality adapts to the
realities of life slowly, incrementally, and healthily. Their understanding of reality develops
as they do, as opposed to bashing them over the head one day. The sheltered mind must one day be
wrecked and start over, and painfully.
Some simply refuse to accept this new world. They opt out.
So it is with depression. I get it. It is
not something we want to be believe.
How can it be that so many people bear the burden of this inner
darkness? How can it be that the
human race struggles so? That at
any moment any of us can fall into it?
It is terrifying, and much easier to just not believe it or not think
about it. Yet, it is only easier
until reality comes crashing. The
darkness of depression hits us, our parents, our children, siblings, friends,
someone, and our world shatters.
If only we had believed, developed as we went, we would be so much
stronger, prepared for the darkness.
Still, most choose to plug their ears and chime, “La la la la,” until depression
yanks their fingers out of their ears, slaps them in the face, and yanks their
heart of their chest. Sometimes it
is too late, and we lose people.
It is their fault, yes.
They take their own lives, but could we as individuals or a society be
more open and prepared? Yes. We can start with the simple admission
to ourselves that the darkness of depression is real, and it is not simply
wished away. We can steady our
hearts for the possibility of battling that darkness for ourselves or someone
we love, and pray like mad that such hell passes us by. No, foolish or not, we swing for the
moon and pray that darkness goes straight where it came from, hell.
