Let's Talk Abuot Suicide

Friday was, for lack of a better word, interesting. I woke up to the news that Anthony Bourdain had committed suicide that morning. Bourdain was another famous person that we thought we knew just because we let him into our homes to watch his TV show. People thought they knew Kate Spade for her designs, Robin Williams for his movies and “Tonight Show” appearances and Kurt Cobain for his music.

But they do what everyone else does. They fake it. They try to push the depression down and put on a happy face. In some ways, it may be easier for celebrities to put on a fake persona than it is for the rest of us. And we don't see it because we expect them to be the one dimensional characters that we see on screen. We expected Robin Williams to always be his zany self from “Good Morning, Vietnam.” But they are human just like the rest of us.

I’ve been in bed most of the day dealing with my own depression. I’ve been reading my timeline about the latest suicide and so far all of my friends are saying the right things. But being a glass half empty type, I can’t help but remember what two former Facebook friends replied when I posted about my past suicide attempts.
One ridiculed me because of my suicide attempts saying I was leaving behind a huge mess for my family. I'm not saying he was wrong, really, but in that context, it was victim shaming.

Victim shaming actually seems to be popular for people who just don't get it. On a political board I frequent, one poster commented, “Suicide is a selfish act. Suicide is on the rise because boomers are a bunch of self-serving me-firsters and their attitudes have been passed on to following generations.”

He's wrong. Depression lies to you and tells you that everyone would be better ff if you were gone. It's not a selfish act. It's misguided, yes, but that's the depression talking. That’s part of what depression does. That’s why it’s so terribly important to say the right things to folks who are suicidal and depressed. Now I get that it's easy to push your chest out on the internet and make stupid, baseless claims. But words matter and words can kill

When I was at my most suicidal, I felt like my death would actually help people. I felt a drag on them and that they would be better off without me. It wasn't logical, but it wasn't selfish either. Depression lies to you. It makes you feel worthless. You actually begin to think not being alive would lift a burden off those you love and care about.

On the same board, someone thought they were starting a valid discussion on the topic by asking why more folks don't seek help for their depression. To me, he asked the question and then at least partly answered it in his next statement.

“Why is there no proper help or are they refusing help? Some want to be shot by cops and commit suicide by first going on a killing spree and others suffer in private and are not out to take other peoples life.”

We hear it all the time with mass shooters. Many people, including our current president as well as the previous one, has said it's a mental health crisis causing people to kill. OK, whatever. People like me hear that it's people like me who do these sort of things. We get lumped in with the Paddocks, Klebolds and Cruzs of the world. Who would be willing to admit to many people then that they're depressed when they're worried that they'll be judged with the most evil of people in the news?

On a photographer and artists board I post to, one gentleman showed off his ignorance about suicidal people --

"Wow, what a shocker,” he wrote. “He seemed to me to be too snarky and too smart to make an exit that looks so sadly vulnerable. I almost wonder if he had a bad medical diagnosis and didn't want a long decline. He just didn't seem like someone who would have committed suicide without something like that looming."

I got mad at that post, but on further consideration it's not the poster's fault that he thinks this. A lot of people feel this way. He thinks he knew Anthony Bourdain based solely on the persona Bourdain projected on TV. I suppose I felt the same way about Kurt Cobain, although Cobain wore his heart on his sleeve through his lyrics and interviews. The main problem I had with his post was that apparently he thinks smart people don't kill themselves. That's not true at all. Depression does not discriminate one way or the other on intellect, marital status or your socioeconomic class. It does not discriminate at all for any reason.

Someone posted to a friends status on the death of Kate Spade this way – “The thing that is wrong is 1) we don't realize how good we have it, even on our worst days and 2) there is a bunch of people creating a society of professional and perpetual victims and this is coming off as normal.

Get Purpose in your life.”

Well, he's wrong. It's easy to sit at our keyboards and type things like "Get purpose in your life." Or "We don't realize how good we have it." We don't know the battles people are facing in their lives to say whether they have it good or not. We all thought Robin Williams had it good until we found out about his medical concerns. It also ignores the fact that a lot of depression is clinical. It's NOT sadness. Someone whose wife dies may be sad for weeks or months and then pull themselves out of it while another person suffers true depression for what we'd consider a less valid reason.

I know we keep hearing that we need to have a real conversation about depression and mental health in this country. But clearly some people need to listen more than they need to talk