I’m going to be talking about depression and suicide here, so………………………. I was going to post this yesterday, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I woke up to the news that Anthony Bourdain was gone. That he had killed himself. If you know me, you know I’ve been a Bourdain fan since he had his first show, A COOK’S TOUR. I’ve always been obsessed with food, but his work taught me that conversation around food could be about much more than the food itself. His voice became a fixture in my life. The news broke my heart. I thought about his daughter. I thought about his book THE NASTY BITS, where he described the spiral he fell into after his earlier divorce. I did myself a mischief and looked at what everyone was saying on Twitter (I never go to Twitter). And I cried my heart out. Suicide terrifies me because I know what depression feels like, and I know what a slippery slope it is. How you can feel completely out of control and at the mercy of your impulses. And, every time, hearing about someone committing suicide is like watching a person slip and fall off a cliff. I don’t presume to know what he was going through in the days, weeks, months, years, leading up to this. I only know my own experiences. During a recent podcast recording I vaguely mentioned some dark days in college where I barely read the course material because the books were too depressing. What happened, more explicitly, is that I was dealing with the worst depression of my life so far. It got to a point where I had to take a break from college. Some people were confused and angry that I was leaving, and thought I was taking my opportunities for granted because I was “sad.” They thought I was giving up on my future because I was “sad.” And, at that time, I was letting everyone’s judgments sink in, but I was lucky enough to have both a psychologist and a psychiatrist at UCLA backing up my decision. They wrote the note that let me take a break without being financially penalized, which was important because I could barely afford to feed myself then, and could not have returned to college without my loans. They made sure I had enough Lexapro to get through spring and summer because they knew I wouldn’t have health insurance once I left. They wrote down numbers I could call if I needed to talk. I am eternally grateful for the counselor who walked me across campus to the psychiatry building even though I was beside myself and resistant and could feel everyone staring. I got through, and I did go back and I did get my B.A., though I never walked the stage because my delayed commencement ceremony represented a reminder of how I’d just barely made it. And I’m better now, but depression is a thing that has never gone away for me. I’m always conscious of it in the periphery. Making sure it doesn’t find purchase is a daily task. I’m glad I can write because, more than anything else, writing has been the tool that has helped me cope. Sometimes I don’t also have the energy to manage my anxiety, which unfortunately expresses itself through GERD. My self-esteem is an eternal WIP. Sometimes I look down at the marks I made up my arm during that break when my relationship was falling apart, and I wasn’t sure I’d have a place to live, and people were angry at me for being distant and selfish and I couldn’t find the words to express what I was going through and turned to showing it instead. And it will always feel too close to home when someone succumbs. If you or someone you know is in need of help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.
