So this is important to me. I dont need comments saying good for you because this one isnt for me. Today I had the wonderful opportunity to sit down and discuss a very taboo topic with someone: suicide and depression. The individual takes medication for depression but while talking about our paths he said he was a little terrified of the notion of suicide because he doesnt understand it. He considered it a cowards escape. And to some extent hes not wrong. There are cases when it becomes life sucks and I dont want to try to make it better; I quit. That does not pertain to everyone afflicted with the sickness. So I searched to try to describe what goes on inside someones head during these times. Example: say you fail a simple math test. Not a final or even a chapter test, a basic quiz. The normal reaction is well, that sucks. better luck next time. Heres an approximation of what goes on in our heads: An f? How did that happen? I was so sure I knew the material. I studied so hard. What if I had gone to bed at 8 instead of 9 the night before? What if i had spent another 5 seconds on that question? Or that one? Oh no, my parents are gonna freak, theyll be so disappointed. And my friends think im so smart and they rely on me for that. Ive let them down too. Who else am I letting down? What if I... etc etc etc. The list goes on and the internal monologue creates a noise within our heads. Then something else goes wrong like were late for work. The noise gets louder. Then we trip going down the stairs in front of someone we know. The noise gets louder. And every small thing to someone else is one more boost to the volume control until there is a screaming cacophony in our head going FAILURE, DISAPPOINT, LET DOWN, PATHETIC, BAD, LOSER, FAT, UGLY, DISGRACE. We might try a number of things to make the noise stop. Lots of us will turn to our friends. Which is wonderful... for a while. But we are fully aware of how difficult we can be to deal with. We will have emotions that are extreme. They will change time and time again and they can be very taxing to deal with. Were aware of this and we know we are causing you stress. And every single person has their breaking point where enough is enough and you just cant hear any more. Eventually, we will exhaust our resources. But the cacophony inside our heads is still unbearable. And all we crave is silence. Perhaps it is selfish. But theres also a skewed sense of logic at this point. One might argue but your loved ones will be so hurt. We might assess the level of stress we are putting on our loved ones as a burden. We might see ourselves as the problem. The solution is to remove the problem. Does that make logical sense? No. But in our skewed vision it does. I am NOT saying that suicide is ever an ok answer to anything. Ever. But before you throw the word coward out there, please understand it is an illness. One that never really goes away. Some people like me are fortunate enough to develop techniques and systems that keep them going and allow us to avoid those terrifying cacophonies. But not all are as lucky. Today, I was able to give some insight to someone and allow him to not be afraid of people who have this illness. Maybe this will do the same for someone else. Maybe it will raise more questions. Who knows? The point here is that the only way to beat this horrid illness is to allow it to be visible without shame.
Posted on: Mon, 30 Jun 2014 03:55:28 +0000
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