Title 7: Life Won’t Wait
“Bringing a smile to others is easy for me. Bringing a smile to myself can almost feel impossible.”
Depression, even in these times, is still somewhat of a taboo topic to discuss. It’s definitely becoming more acceptable to talk about in a public manner; however, there’s still a stigma to it. Even now, I’ve got family and friends who don’t believe in depression. That it’s just all in your head, or you’re being a “sissy” about your feelings. Why can’t you just be happy? These are the kind of responses that I was getting from them whenever I would try and open up to them. I understand it now because I was at that standpoint in my life once upon a time as well. I had family that had these issues and I just always thought, “why don’t you just get over yourself and enjoy life?” I know now, it’s not that simple. Depression is also something that nobody else can truly understand unless they’ve experienced it. Even then, they still don’t have your feelings and your coping skills. They don’t have the same willpower that you have. They can’t process the emotions in how you’re designed to process them. That’s what makes depression a unique issue to try and solve. It’s not like a regular disease where there’s a one in all pill that you can take that makes everything go away. For some, there are medications that help them, but for most, it’s not that simple. There’s so much trial and error with medication, therapy, and self-care that some can’t handle it and end up hurting themselves greatly.
There are on average 132 suicides per day in the USA according to recent research conducted in 2020. In 2020, 45,979 Americans lost their lives to suicide. Also in that same year, there were 1.2 million suicide attempts that thankfully didn’t result in death. Suicide is the 12th leading cause of death in the United States and the highest suicide rate is in middle-aged white men. That has led to 3.88x men dying to suicide more than women. With those numbers, it’s believed, according to that same recent survey conducted by the Harris Poll, that Americans believe that 93% of suicides could be prevented. All of these, statistics, pertain solely to the United States alone, so one of those 1.20 million suicide attempts that failed, easily could’ve been one of your co-workers, a family member, or even just a neighbor in your community. Trust me, hiding attempts from people is easier than you might think. Again, this is where depression becomes the incognito killer. Sometimes you honestly never know who is battling depression and also how severe it is until something tragic like this is attempted.
Depression, from my viewpoint, is basically your body telling yourself, I don’t want this anymore. It’s not telling you to end your life, it’s telling you to change the person you are at this time and end that cycle of hurt you’re currently living in. Something has to come to an end, but your life should never be the answer. It’s so hard to look for answers to questions that you haven’t even heard yet. It’s hard to speak out whenever you can’t find the words to say. It feels like you’re just a shadow in the dark. It feels like walls are constantly closing in on you. It feels like the pressure of anxiety could cave your chest in. That’s what getting help with depression is like, and for some, those hurdles seem to make it impossible for them to reach out for that help sadly. Even though it feels like there aren’t any answers in sight, you have to jump those hurdles and start those baby steps. You need to seek those answers in order to get help to prevent you from being just another number, another statistic, another hole in the ground. Statistically, I’m supposed to be just another statistic of this. Actually, I’m supposed to have either already died or been incarcerated just going off of my childhood background and the data that’s been collected in surveys over the years. That’s not bragging, and I’ve still got a lot I want to do to change myself and the lives of people around me, that’s just me stating the facts and also saying that you don’t have to become a number. You don’t have to let your past, illness, status quo, etc define you. You don’t have to live in that darkness and live in that hopeless valley. You truly are given the tools within yourself and have the ability to change things. It just takes some extra help at times to utilize those tools. You can never change your past, but you can work on controlling your future.
Reaching out for help is the scariest thing you’ll ever tackle whenever you’re battling depression. Something so simple as saying “I need help” is the greatest hurdle you’ll ever face in your life. You think people will think you’re crazy or that you’re not capable of being a productive member of society, you’ll have to be on pills forever, and yeah those thoughts are true and in certain issues are valid but that shouldn’t prevent you from getting on the path to bettering yourself. The first time I reached out for help and began therapy, I felt like a total nut-job to put it lightly. Only “crazy” people have to go to therapy is what I would tell myself, and that’s simply not true. I was young and I was also confused about how to even begin to tackle depression and childhood trauma. In fact, it would probably surprise you more about the kind of people that are engaged with therapy as opposed to those who aren’t. When I got the balls to reach out for help and begin my true journey to bettering myself, there were still a lot of dark times. Getting help and one session doesn’t automatically fix anything. I just know I had all of this repressed trauma built up in me and I needed a healthy way to get it out. Bringing up some old traumas that you’ve suppressed your entire life and also taking medications that can make you feel numb, or more depressed than when you started them is a reality and it’s usually right at the start of the journey to self-help. But when you do take those steps, and you go through those trials, you’ll notice the progress and change. It doesn’t happen overnight and sometimes takes a while, but eventually, you will discover a better you. I know that I have, and if a knucklehead like me can go through it and come out better, anyone can.
Now once you get help, that doesn’t mean everything is magically cured and you’ll never face depression again. A seasonal change, a traumatic event, a financial strain, or even your job can land you back into depression. Sometimes it just happens, and that’s okay. There isn’t any way to ever fully rid yourself of depression. What’s important is when you do fall into depression, you know how to climb out. It might not be instantly getting out of depression, but you’ll be prepared with new tools and coping skills that will allow you to better process the depression. You have to take those coping skills and just simply remind yourself, that depression isn’t forever. In time and with work, it will pass over. I actually think it hits harder after you’ve had so much rejuvenated joy and wonder come back into your life when seeking help, that once that’s tampered with, you mourn the loss of it even more. You miss what you had and also you feel like you’ve let yourself down and that you’ve destroyed all the progress you’ve made, but that’s far from the truth. There are no magical words or crystal balls that will make depression go away, but there are tools to help battle it. The key truly is identifying when you’ve fallen back into that state of depression and working on getting out of it. It’s tricky to know when you’ve fallen back into it and sometimes it happens without you even noticing. The slow descent becomes the norm and eventually, you’re back to where you were, only worse off sometimes. I at least know that’s the case with me. Then If you aren’t careful, you slowly lose those coping skills and honestly get pushed back down to the start of the self-help journey.
After I got the help and bettered myself, I felt untouchable. I truly felt like anything was possible, and overall I began to see that life really is beautiful. I gained more self-confidence and I was just killing life to put it simply. Then…BOOM!!! I’m hit with a new traumatic event in my life, and it truly threw me deeper into depression than I’ve ever experienced. I thought at first it was just accepting the loss of something you truly held as your lifeline, but then, that sadness wouldn’t go away. Sadness became my new norm. In time, I realized how long I had been in this funk and had fallen into depression. It had just become the new norm. That darkness of depression was my mood all day every day. No matter how much I laughed, listened to music, or hung out with friends, at the end of the night, there was a little voice in the back of my head that kept casting self-doubt upon me. It kept telling me that I wasn’t good enough, I didn’t deserve happiness, and I was just wasting space. I hadn’t heard that voice of self-doubt in so long, but it was basically shouting at me at this point in my life. That voice began making me lose all of the coping skills I had developed and was utilizing daily. Pretty soon, I quit seeing the sun. I started feeling empty. I started feeling anxious all the time. I just overall felt hopeless and numb. Once you get that low, you start getting closer to rock bottom, and you start tempting yourself more and more with tools of destruction.
For me, my escape was becoming alcohol. I was having to get high, just to feel a little dull. At least I was feeling something whenever I was getting intoxicated. It turned out to be nothing but sadness, but it let me know that I could still feel something. This wasn’t a nightly occurrence, never affected my work life, and never made me not reliable for paying bills and such, but it did start helping me lose touch with people who were close to me. Those people who could actually help me out of this situation, I slowly pushed away and determined that I had a battle of my own. Honestly, when I wanted to reach out, I felt ashamed of myself too much to reach out to them. After I had conquered depression and it had subsided for some time, how could I go back to them and tell them I fell into another situation? I was the happy-go-lucky guy that was good at making others laugh, and now I was a shell of myself. I also felt ashamed because somewhere along the way, I lost my personal beliefs. I used to think that I was all I ever needed. I was good enough and I could do anything I wanted to. I believed in myself. When the alcohol started making me feel, even just sadness, I began to feel nothing but truly hollow. I was mourning the loss of something that meant everything to me. My morals and to a degree, my mindset, my lifeline. It’s possible to drink yourself to death, but I never thought of drinking as a means to an end. I almost felt like alcohol was a vitamin I was taking just to get by until the next time I needed another escape from the numbness. I didn’t like facing the demons, but they sickeningly reminded me that I could feel something.
When the alcohol wasn’t doing it anymore, I needed something else. Something more that would allow me to take control of the situation. That’s where cutting quickly became an issue of mine. It’s still a struggle at times because, with that blade in your hand, you can finally control how much pain you feel. It’s all about being in control when your life is in a whirlwind. You sometimes can’t fully control the situation you’re in currently in life, so if you want that control, it’s easy to resort to cutting. Sometimes I would look forward to it, the rush of controlling the pain. It’s sick to think about now and overall a tragic coping skill for anyone to develop, but here I was with a box cutter slashing away at my body. I was doing something I never thought I was capable of but I also was feeling darkness that I wasn’t ever expecting to hit me the way it did either. I was lost. Sometimes it’s just too hard to remember that it’s always darkest before dawn. After that darkness, the sun will come up and brighten the way. It clears away all of that darkness. It doesn’t work in real-world time and as I mentioned earlier. It can take weeks, months, or even years. But the sun does eventually come out and you’ll be in a full clear view of how beautiful life is and how amazing the future can be.
Sadly, cutting isn’t as far as the darkness would take me. Eventually, I’d start tempting my life. I’d mix whatever different pills I had, sleep medication, antidepressants, etc with alcohol. HOW FUCKING STUPID IS THAT?! Whenever I was at the point of doing this, life had already almost become meaningless. I was just a hollow shell going through the motions waiting to feel something other than this hollow sadness. I could go out in public, make people laugh and smile, I’d do my work and have my daily routine, but then I’d get home and hear nothing but silence. The silence was deafening. Eventually, this combination of medications and alcohol just didn’t do anything for me anymore, and sometimes, I couldn’t just get these damn wrists to bleed. I’d just keep mixing more and more and no changes would happen. I didn’t feel anything and sadly I didn’t care what I was doing to my body. Eventually, I would get testier with my tools of destruction. The next step after cutting and the alcohol lay in the wake of a weight-lifting device in the home I had. Over time I would begin hanging myself from the weight-lifting device. I knew it could hold well over 200 lbs, so I figured it could surely hold me for long enough to get the job done. The first time I wrapped it around my neck, I got that rush of control that cutting just wasn’t giving me anymore. I had found a new way to control the hurt. I leaned forward and just started choking myself essentially with my body weight with the weight strap tied around my neck. I did that until I got dizzy and hazy. I saw the darkness coming in slowly out of the corner of my eyes. It scared me because I thought I wouldn’t be able to get stable in time to not suffocate myself to death. I remember thanking God and wanting to change my ways and my views of life after I was able to pull myself up away from the machine. That newfound meaning of life for me lasted less than a day and then I was back mixing whatever stimulants I could find and cutting myself.
Eventually one night, out of nowhere. I got a feeling. The feeling was overwhelming sadness. Deep primal sadness where you become unable to breathe or function normally. There was that shadow of doubt hanging over my head, telling me I’d be better off dead. I didn’t deserve to live. That shadow of doubt screamed so loud that I couldn’t avoid it any longer. It honestly felt like my thoughts, movements, and everything was being controlled by something else. When the madness became unbearable, I wrote out a suicide note to a loved one and apologized for everything I had done, and hoped for forgiveness. I still have the note and look at it as a reminder. A reminder of how irrational you can be and within a moment, how that one thought has caused you to take your own life. It’s truly tragic and just horrible people get to that level. To the level, I was sinking deeper and deeper into it.
That night that I wrote out that suicide letter, I decided it was time. I put the note on the table and began finding a way that I couldn’t back out of it. This was my last night alive as far as I was concerned. I figured out how I was going to accomplish the task. I was going to raise the weight-lifting device a few more notches up than I had ever previously had it sit and wrap it around my neck a few more times than I previously did. Even if I sat down or tried to get the strap unwrapped around my neck, it’d probably be too late. I’d still end up suffocating choking on my own body weight. With a final swig of liquid courage and a few extra anti-depressants, I got the balls to initiate the process. I looked out the window into the black night and I knew that darkness was coming into the house and was coming for me. When I started the process of hanging myself from the weight machine, I just kept looking out the window into the darkness of night. As I kept watching the darkness outside, the world around me grew darker and I slowly felt my body become numb, I could actually feel the life coming out of me. I saw black and then like a bolt of lightning, suddenly I was given a burst of life. Within probably two seconds, I felt so many emotions rush through me. I saw my life just playing so fast right before my eyes. The main thing I thought was life-changing at the moment was I actually could feel again. I wasn’t hollow anymore. I saw the joys of life as they flashed across my eyes. The numbness had gone away and the darkness cleared away and I instantly just had the energy and hindsight to stop what I was doing and realize that I had so much more to give to the universe and I had so much more life to live. It took some time but eventually, I got untangled from the machine with this newfound energy. After I finally got untangled, I just lay on the cold floor and worked on catching my breath for a few moments. New life had been breathed into me and made it difficult to catch my breath. After I caught my breath, I just became inconsolable. I cried until it hurt to cry. Just sitting on the floor, bawling, and letting those primal emotions out. I thanked God for the changes in my heart and for filling me up once again. I also thanked myself for having mercy on myself to see that I needed change and from that moment on, I was willing to change. That’s the key when depression hits is having the will to change. Easier said than done, but fully possible.
We all have a purpose. No matter how small or how grand you feel, everything you do to other people or whatever you put out into the universe causes a chain reaction in not only your life but the lives of others around you as well. Some people think if you’re not rich or famous, you can’t make a difference but that’s so far from the truth. I know I was put here to make others happy and to make others laugh. I just have that ability. For just a few moments out of the day, I have the ability to make people forget their worries, issues, bills, whatever, and just have a laugh. Within that time those people have the chance to forget about their worries. It’s those moments of making people laugh and changing their outlook on things, even a few moments in the day, that can lead to changing their mood for the rest of the day. Who knows, that person you made laugh could’ve cried themselves to sleep the previous night. They could also be going through depression and getting swallowed up in that darkness, but within that moment, maybe you helped change their outlook. Not saying it’s saving lives, or makes you a saint, but I truly believe that what you put out into the universe, can be infectious with the people that you surround yourself with. I know whenever I’ve been caught up in that darkness, sometimes a silly joke just reminds me that there are joys in this life and there is a light that can shine out of the darkness. Even if it is brief, it shows there’s a beacon of hope.
That’s not to say it’s ever easy to make jokes with people or to act silly to make them smile whenever you’re in that darkness. Bringing a smile to someone else is easy for me, bringing a smile to myself can at times feel impossible. Hiding behind a faded smile is the easiest thing I’ve ever done in my life. At one point, I truly mastered it and could fake emotions without anyone even second-guessing it. When you hit that point of being contempt of living and hiding in the darkness, that’s when you have to readjust and begin to focus on yourself. If you work hard enough you’ll find within yourself, you learn to realize you this isn’t the way to live this gift of life. When you’re bringing joy to others, you need to bring that joy to yourself. Don’t give out all of that love to others though. Be selfish and give yourself the most love. Realize you matter. Realize you can make a difference, and also realize that life is beautiful. It really and truly is. Life is a gift, but it won’t wait for you. You’ve got to power through the grief, the hurt, the darkness, the worries, the doubts, and the insecurities and reach out to take life in. Breathe it in and enjoy it. Get high off of life instead of the toxic shit you can put in your body. You win life whenever you reach out and embrace yourself and realize you’re truly a rock star and you can make positive impacts on others. You’re truly invincible whenever you embrace yourself and you’re comfortable within yourself. The gift is right there, so why wouldn’t you take it? It costs nothing to reach out and take it, but it can cost your life if you leave it sitting there. Don’t get caught up in a moment that wasn’t meant to last. Take care of yourself because you really do matter and you can put something wonderful out to the universe if you truly want to.