Sometimes Our Masks Break

[Somehow, this never published.  Remedying that, now.]

If you’ve never suffered with depression and you’re spouting your opinion on how a person feels, I want you to stop.  Just…stop.  You have no idea.  You may think you do, but you don’t.  The only way you can even come close is if you’ve watched someone, closely, someone you love, perhaps, suffer with depression.  Even then, it’s kind of like watching someone with a cast, be it on an arm or leg.  You can sympathize with the person wearing the cast, but unless you’ve broken a bone, you have no idea what all is entailed in having your arm or leg immobilized for a month, with aching, itching, and that weird feeling of huge amounts of pent up energy that sits and almost tingles in futility, or with the doctor visits and pain killers and months of physical therapy, thereafter. Nor can you understand depression.  Not fully.

I don’t talk about my depression, really.  This is mostly because I feel it’s not anyone’s business but, also, because with the stereotypes and stigmas that are still pervasive in our society, most people are ill-equipped to know how to deal with someone who’s depressed.  It’s hard enough interacting and dealing with people, as it is, and this may just be from the depressive perspective since I only have one perspective and that’s it, let alone with people who are armed only with what mass media have told them about depression.  One of the biggest things is understanding and there’s so little of that in the world, today, that it’s naïve to think there would be much in this regard.  People tend to have a limited amount of understanding for something they can’t comprehend, fully.  That’s OK – I understand that.  I’m not criticizing someone who doesn’t understand depression, I’m just asking you keep your opinions to yourself when you tell me, or the rest of the world, how someone who is depressed must be feeling.  There’s no “must be” with no frame of reference.

Most recently, what Robin Williams’ death has brought to the fore is something that I’ve dealt with for most of my life, and it’s not just dealing depression. It’s dealing with someone you love feeling so emotionally injured, so depressed, so alone, so incapable of seeing any other solution in a great, wide world of solutions, as to kill themselves.  There aren’t a lot of people in this world equipped to deal with this, especially when it’s someone close to them, someone beloved.  I’m not an expert, by any stretch.  I’m just a guy, already someone who suffers with depression, who has the added burden of having two people in his life take theirs.

There have been people attacking Robin for his choice.  It’s almost as if they feel this was an easy choice made with no forethought or attention paid to consequence.  It’s almost as if they have no idea what they’re speaking of, at all, when it comes to depression and the suicidal thoughts that haunt individuals every waking moment of every day making it seem almost like a release from a chrysalis of confusion, silent suffering and emotional and physical pain.  Yes, it’s like those ads that have run in the last few years – depression hurts.  Physically.

Part of this, for me, is that this man, Shepard Smith, just suffered a loss, as did the rest of us, of someone he loved growing up and as an adult.  He's angry that Robin has left him in this way.  That's OK -- I get it.  We all feel that way.  The difference is that when you're surrounded by ignorant name calling and vitriol all day, as is the environment I glean from watching 30 seconds of Fox "News," you react not as a reasonable adult, but as a schoolyard bully whose favorite teacher just announced she was leaving.  She's now the worst person ever to walk this earth.   Likewise, Robin suddenly became a "coward."  I'm not apologizing for this Smith person.  I don't know him. I just know people like him.  Schoolyard bullies don't react with compassion towards the person or situation.  They react by lashing out. 

It's easy to fall back to the pervasive thoughts from a less enlightened age (prior to the 1990s, really) where suicide WAS seen as cowardice by so many.  What's hard is to FEEL and understand what a person so completely devoid of hope as to *kill* themselves is feeling, even a sliver.  One thing FoxNews has never been about is sympathizing with "other" and understanding someone else's perspective.  I truly hope that this person never has to face this so-called cowardice in any aspect of his life other than vicariously and detached.  It's not something I would wish on anyone.