I didn’t want to comment on the death of Robin Williams other than to say Depression is a beast. I ignored every inbox message I got concerning it. (Sorry if you were one) I am not the spokesperson for depression or suicide. I have struggled. And with God’s strength continue to fight. Today was one of those days where I got about 10 different messages about it. I only responded to one. Mainly because I consider the person who tagged me to the article a brother and I simply wouldn’t ignore anything from him. I realized I should probably say something about it. If there was a good day to write it would be today. I need some release. I apologize in advance if this seems stream of conscious. It is. I like many other American’s have watched the drama of Ferguson unfold over the past couple of weeks. I’ve debated and fought people. Contested points, contested theories, contested principles. I’ve had conversations with family and friends. Heavily researched raising my future kids in other countries (Did you know uttering a racially derogatory term is punishable by up to 6 months in jail in Paris?). I’ve cried. I’ve lost sleep. I’ve really been going through it. I’ve heard I’m crazy for doing all of that about 100 times. Maybe not everyone called me crazy but they definitely let me know I was doing too much. Following the situation made sense. Speaking out was reserved for the brave and since I am compelled, I must be brave. But beyond that…losing sleep or crying. Calm Down, V. I feel things deeply. (I have also started almost every paragraph of this blog with I which I don’t like to do). If one of my friends is hurting I feel like I have to do something. If someone I love is making a mistake, I feel like I have to help them. If someone close does something great or is joyful….so am I. I won too. I think about everything long and hard. I weigh. I consider. So much that it is commonly said that I live in my head. I overthink to the point that I am sometimes dangerous to myself. I also get enraged when people don’t think enough. I encourage everyone I know to get out and live. Not so they can boast about their pictures and experiences. But so they can expand their worldview. Stop believing that they are the only people in the world that matter and their way is the only way. I’ve noticed that when people are cloistered or become confined, they begin to try to find ways to change their little sliver of the world. To break up the monotony. To feel different. To not feel like they are just like everyone else around them. To make them feel special. Environmental redecorating of sorts. I (damnit, another I) think that when you expand your world view, you don’t’ have to do that so much. When you see thousands of different people and cultures and life experiences, you are able to keep into perspective how unique you really are. How grateful you should be. You don’t even need to EXPERIENCE certain things for yourself. You’ve seen them. Seen the good and the bad of it. And you can make an educated decision as to whether you want to partake. I think living is the greatest gift of God and it should not be done small. You should live as big as you can. Whether that’s taking a road trip once a year, or being able to charter a yacht around the world. Whatever your means, you should live and enjoy life. Robin Williams didn’t see purpose in that gift anymore. I’ve known that feeling. I remember one time, feeling so down and alone that I rationalized that the only person who would really miss me if I died was my little brother. Everyone else, even if they were initially shocked, would get over it. Move on. Maybe start a scholarship in my name. At least I’d help someone there. More than I was doing alive. The thing that stopped me was the idea that my little brother Alex might not understand. Initially it was also that whoever found me would be traumatized. But then I figured I’d do it in a place that police would find me. They’ve seen plenty of dead bodies. They’d be ok. Just Alex. He wouldn’t get it. How much my little brother loves me and I love him is the only reason I’m alive. Love is a powerful thing. When I really sit and think about it I know people it would have devastated. People I wouldn’t even have considered. At the time, and if I can be honest even sometimes now, I don’t think about those people. We get caught up in our everyday lives. I don’t even think I matter to them, that they remember me. It’s not fair that I think that. I’m not great at staying in contact either. But I ‘m also notoriously known for paragraph texts, and random calls or emails. I do my best to try to visit with everyone I know in any given city that I’m in and having a barrage of questions about what’s been going on. Whether it’s comfortable for you or not. Because random : I Love You’s, I’m proud of you’s, and thinking about you’s are nice. But that’s not walking things out with people. That’s not a real relationship. That’s not being open. You’re not engaging in life with me. While your attempts are appreciated, when I am going through something, and you randomly text me : “Thinking of You V”, I know you have no real interest in hearing why I can’t get death off of my mind. If I had any inclination that you cared I would’ve called you. I think, for me, sometimes as well, I would just avoid the conversations because I knew people weren’t necessarily trying to understand. They, because they loved me, wanted me to hurry up and be better. So they would say really unhelpful stuff. Stuff that, though I saw their good intentions, demonstrated their limited world view and belittled me to the point that I wanted to retreat. My mom is a pro at helping when she doesn’t understand. She’ll fight me, until I cry. She’ll do whatever it takes to get things out of me, even if I want to kill her while she’s doing it. But we always get to the bottom of it. That’s what it takes sometimes. Who or what do you love so much that you’ve invested time and fought for lately? Our culture in general thinks of fighting as bad. Anger as counterproductive. Sadness as something you should avoid. I know why. Those reasons are obvious. However they all have another side, one that we don’t often explore because it would cause us to be uncomfortable. This is a culture built on comfort. Sometimes you have to fight. For what you believe in, for yourself, for your loved ones hearts. Anger can sometimes be righteous and be the thing that leads you to see an area that you are called to serve. Sadness can show you where there is no light. Where you have to subsequently fight to illuminate. You should be glad you feel it, otherwise darkness could overtake you and you wouldn’t know it. It’s a warning sign. But if you ignore or avoid all of those things….you will be overtaken. You will lose. You will not overcome. Many times we can’t face it alone. I’ve had friends who have tried to make me happy when I was sad. Who have tried to fight the things bothering me. Who have stood by me in my anger. Their intentions were good. But they didn’t help. I needed to unpack why I was sad. I needed someone to help me not be blinded by my anger but find what I was truly mad at and either come to terms with it or change it. I needed people who wouldn’t blindly throw punches at anything I was fighting…because sometimes I was fighting the very thing that held my healing….and help me find my real enemy.. THEN fight that guy. I rarely had that. Who WANTS to do all of that. It was easier to enable. Or to blame me. If you subscribe to Christian beliefs like I do, and believe that depression is the enemy…it was easier to say : “That’s the enemy, you gotta fight him and you keep letting him back in”….but somehow people who struggled with lust were “fighting hard against human nature and needed support”. People could understand how someone could fall when tempted with sex. But how could you continuously fall to bad thoughts? Because, ya know, lust isn’t a bad thought. If you believe that depression is a mental illness or a disease, which I also believe (and will discuss some other time) it was easier to say: “she doesn’t want to get better. She keeps laying there. She needs to get up. If she got up she’d feel better but she won’t”. Regardless, people gave up. They won’t fight with you long. Even if they love you and stand by you, they won’t fight with you for long. My mom never stops fighting me. Ever. Even if Mommy doesn’t understand she will fight until she does. Even if I am refusing, completely blinded by depression in that moment, my mom will come and fling open blinds, and cook the foods I like, or start making wild accusations as to why I feel the way I do until I yell at her about how wrong she is and without even knowing start spilling. Sometimes the spill is “I don’t know. I don’t know, I can’t figure it out, I don’t know.” But we’ll eliminate what it’s NOT. We’ve had the same conversations over and over. Every time she listens like it’s the first time. Eventually, she would say “You remember last time?” and by myself, I could say “Yeah…and it got better….but this time is different.” Then it progressed to “Remember last time?” and I couldn’t say this time was different. Because every time felt different. But I came out every time. My husband has learned the same thing. I don’t even lay in bed anymore. Not because I don’t want to, but because I can run through that conversation in my head. It might take me longer than it takes you to get out of bed, but I still get out. And I’m proud of that. It took a long time to get me there though. As well as the ongoing concentrated efforts of two people. TWO. In my thousands of Facebook Friends, Followers, and Subscribers, TWO have walked with me. Two have fought with me. Two have decided that this is not “just how she is” or “You know Vanessa is emotional”. Two people decided “She’s going to miss her life if this doesn’t get fixed,” and committed to fixing it with me. Even when I couldn’t commit. When one put more on me than I felt like I could take, I would run to the other to complain about how “Mean (s)he was being.” And the other wouldn’t budge. “No, (s)he wasn’t. That was the truth. We have to do this.” I don’t know if Robin Williams had that. Not because he didn’t have people who love and cherish him and wanted him well. But because that’s really freakin hard to find. Sometimes, when we do find it, there are a million other people around us that aren’t challenging us to be better. They just want us to be “happy” and will give us temporary things to make us so. It’s so much easier to just hang out with them and shun people like Mommy and RJ. Say they’re mean. Go away. Hell Maybe they are mean sometimes. But it’s needed. When you’re like Robin Williams or have lots of fame, people tend to give into your every whim. Any temporary fix you need to feel better, from a laugh to a compliment, a drink to a hit, you can get. Because you’re you. When that all stops coming, and years have gone by, and you’ve never unpacked, and everyone who loved you enough to fight you’ve pushed away….you’re left to your own mind that has piled up years of thoughts. Even if someone, multiple people even, were willing to help you fight now, that’s a very deep, dark, black hole. So deep, it would probably endanger their well being to help you fight. They could only do so much. I reckon that would be very scary. And very lonely. I bet that darkness is blinding. So blinding, it seems there is no way out. That type of hopelessness, whether you subscribe to Christendom, modern science, or both, is not innate, it is created. Even if you’ve been attacked by disease or demon, when you nip something in the bud; when you aggressively counter attack, you can do away with a problem. Most all cancers can even be cured if discovered early enough and aggressively treated. I believe that people, even Manics like myself can live depression free. Not PROBLEM free, or temptation to fall back into depression free…but Depression free. I think the reason it goes undetected for so long is because of peoples’s lack of knowledge. Limited world view. Obsession with comfort. Inability to be challenged. It is not a problem that can be walked out alone but is often tasked to be. I don’t think suicide is the answer. But I’ve been there. So I know what it feels like when you feel like it is. It is a selfish act. But in that place, you feel selfish for staying alive. You’re bringing misery to yourself and the people around you. Its obvious. They hate when you talk about how you feel. They think you’re not trying. You hurt them because you can’t be happy. They remind you how burdensome you are. If you stay, it feels more selfish than going. THAT’S INCORRECT. Because people do care. They just don’t know how to show it. But it doesn’t feel that way. My only grievance with the coverage of Robin Williams’ death is the constant idea that he is now free. We hope he’s found peace. It’s kind like saying, (to me anyway), that this was a far better option, because we weren’t going to sit with him for as long as he would’ve needed to be better. We wouldn’t have kept fighting him. No one would have. This is better. I disagree with the stance that we shouldn’t shower him with adoration or praise for a life well lived, we should….but we should highlight that what we REALLY should’ve done was do that while he was living. We shouldn’t be absolving ourselves of our duty to fight for our loved ones by sitting with them and dedicating our lives to each other by saying “this was his way out.”. We have to help each other see the beauty of life. Sometimes that begins by cleaning up trash first. 50 years of trash is a lot. That won’t come easy. It probably looks and feels like hell. Hell 29 years of trash is tough. But it’s worth it. And we have to see that so that we can encourage those that don’t, TO SEE it. As Ferguson has been unraveling, I’ve felt hopelessness. I’ve felt the feeling of no one understands, no one gets it. They try but they don’t. People’s limited world views and obsession with comfort and inability to get out of their little sliver of America has made them look at Ferguson the same way they look at Robin Williams for suicide. Some people are making it celebrity, failing to see that the reason it exists is because no one was highlighting those gross injustices before. Merely commenting. The “Thinking of You text”. That’s frustrating, just like this sudden upswing in “if you know someone struggling with suicide” and “Robin Williams was my favorite actor” but there’s value to it. At least we’re talking. But there is also a strong opposition, who fault the victims, who fault the community, who believe that it is not their place to comment on this nor should their comfort be jeopardized by someone else’s problem. Fix your own damn problem. What made you have those problems to begin with. Maybe if you’d get out of the bed. Pull up your pants. Try to go do something instead of just laying there. Stop getting arrested. It feels the same to me. I didn’t choose this. Still, in not choosing it I haven’t always been wise enough to see how things I did made it worse. People had to be wise enough to see past that and get to the bottom of it FOR me, IN SPITE of me. Mike Brown is no different. He didn’t choose to be black in a country that is still struggling with civil rights. Though he didn’t choose his position, he didn’t always make good decisions. He didn’t always do much to help it either. Someone has to be wise enough to see past that fact and say “But what’s the real problem here.” The real problem here is no different than my real problem. Or Robin Williams real problem. The real problem is that we are human. And we are flawed. And sometimes our flaws hurt others. Sometimes our flaws hurt us. Sometimes our flaws even expose the flaws in others. The officer who shot Mike Brown was a flawed individual. Mike Brown was a flawed individual. Robin Williams was a flawed….I am a ….. You are…Flaws. We have to correct the flaws not damn people because of them. Mike Brown was not a candidate for execution because he was a flawed individual. Maybe a candidate for arrest but not execution. To say he should’ve known how he could be shot or get arrested for stealing and shouldn’t have done that dumb stuff is like telling me I should always know my trigger and getting depressed is my fault. You’re right. I should know my triggers. But is depression my FAULT? No. I can’t always see it when it’s when my triggers are happening. I need help sometimes. Someone who can see it to tell me. If my depression makes you uncomfortable, like the color so someone’s skin or the neighborhood they come from, you won’t be able to help me. You’ll do your damndest to separate from me. Then blame me for needing help. Similarly, the officer who shot Mike Brown is flawed. He, and seemingly the whole station, are too deeply entrenched to see it. We’ve seen from Robin Williams what years of that can look like. Having a problem. Some people telling you but more people telling you it’s fine. Until it becomes your culture. And it consumes even the good. So deep, so dark, so far gone, that it would literally take people fighting for it, not so concerned about their comfort but about the truth, to go and fight them around the clock to see it. Like Robin, being that dark that long….you’ve become functional. People wouldn’t even believe you had a problem or brush it off. But you do. And you’ll end up killing something. Because no one fought for you, to show you how dangerous you had become to yourself and to others. And how you no longer valued life. It’s all the same. I can’t act like it’s ok to excuse Robin Williams’ death anymore than you can Mike Brown’s. Both senseless. Very different. But both at the hands of something dark. Something everyone could’ve helped had they only fought. But comfort ruled. Preoccupation with our little slivers of the world reigned. We ignored it. To death. That’s where I stand. On everything. I’m hurt and confused. I’m downtrodden. Perplexed. Angry. But I’m not depressed. Even when I’m tempted to be I’m not. Because two people fought for me. I’ll fight for all of those who are struggling with depression in the wake of Robin Williams death. I’ll fight for all of those fighting for their civil rights in Ferguson. I recognize that my little comfort zone, my little sliver of the world can not be well if yours is not. Because I need you and you need me. If I am not well, neither can you be. I will not start every paragraph of my life with I.
