I was stunned to hear about the death of Robin Williams. When I read that he committed suicide my heart broke. Honestly the first thing I thought was “How could he take his life? Surely he doesn’t ‘want’ for anything!” He had reportedly been battling severe depression and I immediately understood.
Condolences and comments were flooding Facebook and one person made the comment “How can someone be in so much pain and loneliness?”
If you don’t suffer from depression it is hard to understand. When you look at it from the outside it doesn’t make sense. I know people who have plenty of money and success and are surrounded by loved ones who suffer from debilitating depression.
Imagine you are in a deep, dark hole. You can put your hands on the sides of the hole but you can’t climb out. You can’t grab hold of anything and even if you could you don’t have the energy to move. You look up and there is nothing. Absolutely nothing. All you can do is lie down and listen to your heartbeat. Sometimes your heartbeat is deafening and you want nothing more than for it to stop.
The darkness feels like an old, heavy quilt covering you. There is a comfort about it and staying under the cover of darkness feels safe and secure. What seems like a comfortable, safe place is actually dangerous.
Depression is real. It is devastating and can destroy an individual and the ones around them.. When you are at the point of taking too many pills “to make the pain go away” or playing with the idea of slitting your wrists the next step can be the point of no return.
One of the misleading things about depression is that people who are depressed “look” sad and gloomy. They wear dark colors and keep to themselves. This is not true. As a person who suffers from clinical depression I will tell you that for years I taught in the public schools and did not miss a day of work because of my depression. I was able to “turn it on” during the day and the moment I turned into the parking lot at school I was “functioning”. The minute I left the parking lot, it was a different story. I hid quite a bit but it eventually took a toll on me and I was able to get the help I needed.
What does depression look like? The kindergarten teacher loving your kids, the grocery store clerk trying to make ends meet, the high school student scared of the future, the CEO of a company with huge responsibilities, the stay at home mom running on empty, and even the pastor’s wife who lives in a fishbowl.
You never know who is suffering. Don’t tell them “just shake it off, go take a shower, snap out of it!”
If it was that simple, they would have followed those instructions a long time ago.
Today I Am Thankful For my favorite Robin William’s roles:
- Parry in “The Fisher King”
- Mork from Ork
- Chris in “What Dreams May Come”
- Andrew in “Bicentennial Man”
- Armand in “The Birdcage”
