“You're only given a little spark of
madness. You mustn't lose it."-Robin Williams
I’ve
always been very candid about my bouts with depression, which I believe is
something that never really goes away, at least not completely. For me, it has
always been an ongoing battle, where like everything else there are good days, bad
days, then the really bad days and the even worse days, which are the ones you
have to really look out for. Because when you’ve battled depression and
suicidal thoughts as much as I have, you become all too aware just how easy one
can off themselves. I can’t tell you how many times I thought about it, or been
tempted.
I don’t take any medication for my depression,
simply because I don’t like the person it makes me, and it just feels like my
head is a fog and I find myself becoming less imaginative more restless and lethargic,
numb.
I battle my depression by
staying active, working out helps a lot; it’s hard to think about killing
yourself when you’re feeling sore and tired along with that natural high that
comes with a good workout. Having good friends to lean on or to share a few
good laughs with also helps, but you have to be sure that they’re the right
friends, not the ones who want you around just when it’s convenient, or for
what you can do for them, but the ones who just want to hang out for the
pleasure of your company. Family can
help too, but most of all I just find solace and peace in keeping myself busy,
because it’s only when my mind has a chance to wonder do those dark thoughts
come creeping in. So I read, I write, I play video games, or if it’s nice I go
hiking or out for a run and sometimes I just dust off my old bike, and then go
out for a spin. As you may or may not know, it’s the quiet moments, when you’re
alone and with nothing to do but think that causes problems. I’m a little
self-critical, I think too much and over analyze, which I’m sure may one day be
the death of me, but I’m working on it, I’m a work in progress and this is my
progress report.
But what happens when I have a particular rough day, one
that leaves me feeling beat up, abused, left out and alone? What happens when each day becomes worse than
the last and it becomes increasingly harder to pick myself back up from the
spot where I lay? My method is simple; I just close my eyes and whisper,
“You
just have to make it until the day after next, because the day after next will
be better.” Then I convince myself that it has to get better and I’ll be honest
sometimes it does. But it also helps to remind myself of all the things I have
to do that no one else can, even if there’s a chance that no one else will
care. Such as finishing my book, and telling the stories of all the characters
who have taken up residence up there inside my head, living in the pool of
imagination, needing me to breathe life into them by telling their stories
through a collection of words, demanding I share their stories with as many
people as possible and with the world. Because if I don’t, I know I’ll look up
and see all of them gathered around me on my death bed, with some of them
sobbing, with some pacing, all asking me the same thing.
“Why didn’t you give us life? We
came to you and you let us die and now we’ll be forgotten without ever having
lived, why couldn’t you give a chance to live and breathe? We came to you and
no one else, we trusted you with our stories, our lives and with our dreams.”
I remind myself I can’t
disappoint my characters.
Having faith also helps when it comes to battling depression.
Even if you don’t believe in anything, that’s cool (I don’t judge) but it does
help, even when it doesn’t. There’s something about talking to God, praying, or
seeking communion that I found comforting. For me, the church and a pastor was
the first place I could think of going to seek counseling, and that too helped.
Then sometimes the only thing that keeps me holding on when all I want to do is
let go, is my faith and the fear that I would condemn myself to an eternity in
hell. Yet even still there had been times when I thought that God owed me one
after everything I had to endure. Losing a family to lies and greed, growing up
in a broken home, being forsaken by very own brother that I was just beginning
to get to know and who was becoming my best friend and someone I could confide
in.
I hate it when people compare their lives to mine,
especially when they’ve always got to go home to two loving parents and compare
having a bad day to a broken life. In truth, no one really knows your battles
but you, same with how no one knows what it was like but me. But honestly I
don’t really like talking about it, but I know I should and probably need to,
so open my mouth and begin to speak. So I try not to judge when someone begins
telling me about their problems, or struggles, I just do my best to sit there
and listen, sometimes lending a comforting hug, and maybe just say,
“I can relate,” So that they don’t feel so alone and I
hear them out, letting them talk, sometimes it helps just having someone there
to listen and not judge their pain or suffering, or compare it to my own. For
each battle is a little different from someone else’s. Each struggle is
personal, and we deal with it in our little ways.
Never tell a person with
depression to just get over it.
If you really want to help, just
be there for them. That’s all it really takes really. Make them feel loved and
appreciated and whatever you do, don’t try and force them to talk about it, it’s
never easy. It always makes us feel awkward and uncomfortable, like we’re
trying to get yours or someone else’s pity, or we think you’re sitting there
judging us. It’s always hard to put into words, or to properly articulate what
it is we’re going through, what’s on our minds and how difficult the fight is.
So when we do talk and open up about what it is, don’t
trivialize what we’re been through and tell us to get over it, like the
contents of a first-aid kid somehow holds the cure for depression. Because it’s
hard enough just talking about it and an ingrown life isn’t something surgeons
can just cut away with a scalpel and a knife.
Just being there for us is enough and what we really need
are reasons to smile and to laugh until it hurts, we don’t need some
inspirational quote you’ve read from the back of a cereal box one Sunday
morning, and we don’t need to quote passages from the bible, or verses to us.
All that ever does is infuriate and frustrate us, more so that you think a few
deep or clever words would somehow be a magical string of words that would
forever bring us out of our depression and despair that we’ve spent most of our
lives fighting. So believe me when I say, it’s not that easy to make go away
and if it were that simple we would have found the cure long before you came
along, no offense. Sometimes all we really need is a friend, a hug, or
something as little as companionship, just being around is usually enough. You
don’t have to be clever, or preachy, just be thoughtful.
If you’re in a relationship and your significant other is
struggling, just remind them how much you love and appreciate them. Leave them
little love notes, make them dinner, or buy them something meaningful, flowers,
chocolates, whatever it is they like, or hobby they’re into. Because it’s the
little things we remember and it’s up to you to be the light at the end of the
tunnel and it’s you that has to be the one to remember to always shine bright.
Because sometimes, we just need to be reminded to remember and it falls to you
to make them remember. Love is really all you need.
Robin Williams was a beloved actor and comedian, one my
childhood heroes and I never dreamt of him having this struggle with
depression, which had driven him to take his own life on August 11th
2014. Which also prompted me into
writing this particular entry, so maybe we’ll be able to avoid this kind of
tragedy from happening again and to just raise some general awareness on the
subject at hand, since many of us struggle and fight this disease privately. Like Robin Williams who once made the world
laugh and just listening to or watching his stand-up had pulled me through many
a dark day. I honestly feel for him and relate with his struggle that he ended
up losing in the end. The problem is that suicide isn’t really all that
selfish,(now hear me out before you ready your torches and pitchforks) When
someone gives up, they just opt out. They grow tired and weary of feeling like
a burden, or like a joke, as though everyone is laughing at us, as opposed to
laughing with us. We feel alone and lost, a lot of times we don’t to talk about
it, because we feel like we’ll just be a bother. It’s nobody’s fault, you just
have to understand how scared we are to talk about it, how weak it makes us
feel. So we tend to shutout the rest of the world because we don’t want to be
that burden, or to be perceived as if we’re crying out for attention, like all
those on twitter or facebook who often moan and whine about being depressed
because maybe they’re going through a breakup, or quite literally just want
attention.
The real tragedy in suicide, is when it happens, these
people will never know how many people loved and cared for them, for you. You
matter and people do care…People do love you even if it’s hard to see, or even
feel. Depression is the real enemy, it likes to lie to us and has the tendency
to blind us to that fact and more often than not it convinces us that we’re
unloved, uncared for, forgotten children of God’s grace. Depression wins by
convincing us that we’re burdens when we’re not. Even I, after all this time,
knowing this, still struggle with this one little fact.
But every set back, disappointment and heartbreak has the
tendency of pushing me slightly closer to the edge or back to where I was. So
sometimes I feel myself struggling at the oars to fight and push my darkness my
back. But it’s still there even when things are going well, however the better
things are going the quieter that little voice in the back of my head becomes
and it gets easier to push it back. So I keep trying to pick up the broken
pieces of myself and like Humpty Dumpty I attempt to put myself back together again. It’s a
long, arduous task and I’ve grown to except that some pieces of myself will never
fit, or have gotten lost, or stolen during a very long and unforgiving life. This
is because, I still wonder why my mother never loved or accepted me, and I find
myself missing the three brothers I never get to see again, none of which will
ever see or understand the truth. I never got to see my younger brothers grow
up, or to be the older brother I always wanted to be, but I was around them
enough to love them with all my heart. I hate the fact I didn’t spend more time
with them when I had the chance, I really dug being an older brother.
Being single doesn’t help much either and after a while
seeing and hearing about all these happy couples being together tends to
sometime wear on my soul, leaving me wonder if I’ll ever find that one person
who makes me feel like the sun was something she made for me in a toolshed.
So at nights, when I can’t sleep and I’m alone with my
thoughts, I find myself walking a tightrope, wondering what it’s all for and
why it is I’m still here.
I don’t own a gun, because sometimes the fight and the
struggle becomes too hard even for someone like me, who’s aware of what it is
I’m suffering from. It’s the days when I’m beaten down, or when a sad song
strikes a particular cord with me, or I watch a warming and touching movie
about family like in the movie, “Impossible” knowing I’d never know that
feeling of a warm loving family unless I meet someone and start one of my own.
Then there are times when I find myself looking through old photographs, or
when old memories just hit me out of the blue, like a knockout punch at the
beginning of the first round.
It scares me knowing if I had a gun and what I would do
with it on of these bad days. The temptation of a quick and relatively pain
free way out would be too much of a temptation for me to use. So I stay away
from the variables that may bring me to my end sooner than expected and I
remind myself that I’ve always been a survivor and how I may be that one person
in a million who somehow survives, but with serious traumatic injury which
would only add to more complications and struggle to my little life.
So yeah, sometimes it’s easier to stay silent then
speak the truth. But there are three things that can’t remain long hidden, the
sun, the moon and the truth. And the truth was created for the people who want
to be a better person. Our strong faith and love will us down the right path.
Sorrow, despair, loneliness, suicide, these are the
words we don’t mention in public. These feelings we keep firmly locked away, we
dare not discuss, though their currents run through all of us in varying ebbs
and flows throughout the course of life. Just as hope, passion, happiness and
love all run together as well. I believe it doesn’t make us weaker to admit
these lulls or frailties as someone once said, “Acceptance is the first step
toward happiness.” Don’t fight the flow,
but don’t let it drag you under and hold you down either.
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