If you can’t see it, is it really there?
By Guest Author: Melissa
March 9, 2016
Disclaimer: SickNotWeak does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. This content contains explicit and sensitive information that may not be suitable for all ages.
Depression doesn’t show up on x-rays, but it’s readily visible in the morgue. When a famous person like Robin Williams commits suicide then the world gets a tangible reminder that depression is real, and deadly. On days like that, healthy people believe in clinical depression.
As an unhealthy person, I also believe in clinical depression. But when a famous person commits suicide and proves to the world that his depression was real, my own personal doubt always resurfaces.
That doubt never fully goes away. I’ve been diagnosed, treated, even hospitalized for my mental illness (for me it’s an anxiety disorder with a side of depression), but I still wonder whether it’s real. I’m the only one in my head, after all, and I know it’s possible I’m just malingering. It’s possible I’m using my diagnosis to get out of having to hold down a job or lose weight or find a boyfriend. It’s possible I’m taking the easy way out.
I’m terrified of death.
I’m terrified of death, so for me suicide would be the absolute hardest way out. I’m not suicidal, which makes me a poor example of a depressive person to many. More than that, it makes my depression suspect. Suicidal ideation is a clear sign of depression; its absence, then, might be a clear sign that mine isn’t a ‘true’ depression, whatever that means.
My mental illness isn’t romantic. It won’t lead to a profound, tragic end that forces people to rethink their views of human nature. I slog along and will continue to slog along, under functioning in a way that makes me so angry at myself that sometimes I don’t know what to do with all that rage. My solution is to tamp it down as best I can so as not to be consumed by it. I tamp down the anger and the sadness and I tamp down hope and ambition alongside them. I don’t have the energy for any of it, anyway, since all my emotional resources go into trying to survive a gnawing, festering anxiety that never completely goes away.
Now and then I write about it, and that writing always sounds insufferably whiny when I read it back. Boo hoo, Melissa, you get nervous a lot. And so my unhealthy mind finds ways to batter itself for not being unhealthy in the proper way.
As much as I sometimes doubt my own problems are more than just character flaws, I nonetheless have plenty of evidence of my anxiety disorder as a real, medical issue. Not everyone is lucky enough to have the remarkable support structure I get from my family, friends and doctor. I’m writing this for those who compare their own depressions to those of famous suicide victims like Williams, and believe that they don’t measure up.
You don’t have to be suicidal to need, and deserve, to feel better.
You don’t have to be suicidal to need, and deserve, to feel better. You don’t even have to believe in your own mental illness. You just have to know that not everybody dreads waking up every day, and looks forward to nothing more than getting to sleep again. You have to know that sadness is fleeting, and if it lingers too long that means it’s more than just sadness. You have to know that there’s help for you even if your disease isn’t likely to be terminal.
And once you accept those things, you have to remember that mental illness doesn’t strike only those who deserve to suffer. Robin Williams certainly didn’t deserve that, and unless you take active pleasure in harming others, neither do you.
You deserve help, and you deserve it even if you’re not dying.
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These words ignited a change in my perception of my suffering in general and suicide in particular – which I radically have condemned as the worst expression of egocentrism.
I know it sounds harsh and cheesy (especially to those loved ones left behind) but I have seen suicide as anything than a “solution to” or “cure from” the suffering. Worse, it puts the pain of suffering on the shoulders to those left behind – leaving no way for giving answers to their questions. And no suicide note could be “good enough” to anticipate the questions going the be raised. So I thought, every suicide person was a weak one at best or a criminal at worst (in reference to Germanwings Flight 9525 in 2015).
While still personally I have no tolerance for those suicide persons killing those uninvolved in their suffering, i think do understand now better those who decide to ultimately quit their pain – which still doesn’t mean I sympathize. It must be like sitting frozen in an ice cube, seeing life passing by, wanting to scream, shouting and reaching out for help but still unable neither to move or make the faintest sound.
I know by myself how it feels to be lonely, almost isolated and thinking that no one understands, but after these words of Melissa now I am grateful for a) having a hard wired fuse protecting me from suicide and b) feeling still enough love and responsibility for me, my family and few friends not to force me or them into something nobody deserves.
We need to talk about it, and we need to do it every day – not only when criminals or celeb’s end their lifes.
Keep up the word, all the best from germany,
Carsten
Wonderful piece. In my writings I try to explain that the brain is in fact an organ and thus suseptable to injury and or disease.
Thank you for writing this, it definitely resonated with me.
We have done such an incredible disservice to ourselves by way of defining death in our culture as something “bad, terrible, to be feared, judgemental, and on and on…….but, the truth is, death is and will be available to you with open, loving arms. Arms that will guide you through the process, through your journey. Try, maybe, to reframe the truly sacred part so that “it” sees things in a new light?
I am always so sad to read people’s take on death when fear is what resonates for them.
Our world is so sadly wired to cater to a very specific demographic (young, 20-50-year-olds simply because they some money and are still unskilled enough that they bow down to paying exorbitant prices simply because of the designer name label. Been there, done that, and just like that period of my life, the t-shirts are long since gone and not even remembered. (I seem to remember one t-shirt I had that was a favorite – “Eat the Rich.”
‘Elderhood” *and yes, every time you see that word written by me know that it is a language that belongs to the first peoples of Turtle Island. I’m borrowing the healing circle part of how I experience the medicine and try not to do anything “UNSKILLFUL”. You can receive good medicine from anyone anywhere, I say.
There is no break in the human chain. It all must help where it fits, back to “the east” where we entered this world.
“Elderhood 101” was an incredible gift to me, from me. (all the info I can share with you. I hope distance and boundaries don’t make it difficult for us to communicate! We’ll do the best we can!
I realize you may be on another planet, you may not be real, or, you may have nothing but malicious intent here, then I say welcome to you too.
Don’t be afraid.
Find out what “part” of you houses the fear? What’s that about?
Get curious about “what makes you tick”?
It’s a hell of a ride, true, but this work really did save my life.
Hope this engages us, even in a microscopic size hug.
Regardless of where you physically are, I think there is a benefit, even in this simple intro!
It may help set the stage around the course topic: “Elderhood”. http://www.andyfisher.ca/event/elderhood-101-0
It is a truly magical, remarkable and necessary step. Transitioning your life from one way of engaging with the energy to another way is designed to be inviting, beautiful, focused on our GAINS and not our LOSES!
Thank you for engaging with me here, fellow traveler.
Wanting to not live but being too scared to commit suicide is a purgatory that I would not wish on anyone. I don’t own a gun mainly because I know one day I might have just enough courage to do it, but you usually don’t get a chance to reconsider after a gunshot. I stopped counseling because I also got sick of hearing my own whining. After decades of counseling and medications and hospitalizations I am about to request ECT which scares the hell out of me. I have never gotten married nor had children (abortion) because of my depression (with a side of anxiety). Fear of harming others due to this horrific disease has made those decisions for me. I gain every pound back that I ever lost and have poor health because of this disease. My thought process is fuzzy and it has lost me several jobs. I had to apply for disability because of it plus other health issues and no one ever truly gets it. It has literally ruled my life for 40 years.