Sometimes, when the need has been made known And the weight is dragging at your feet And your hand reaches out from your sorrow for the life raft thats been offered Thats when you feel like your arms have shrunken, withered away into useless stumps, incapable of grasping. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to grasp the helping hand, your hand wont work, wont close, cant grip. Sometimes, the vortex in the center of the dark night of your soul seems to be pulling you in faster and harder than you can swim out. It is this sort of moment that is deadly. Because even the help sometimes feels like it isnt enough to save you, and when you are drowning in the dark, reaching for the help feels riskier than just sliding under. This, I believe, is what finally snuffed the light of one of our societys most beautiful friends yesterday. We lost Robin Williams because sometimes, even with the greatest of resources and the best of intentions, depression wins. Its an insidious, eternal enemy, and it uses your own mind as its propaganda machine. Winning is possible, but exhausting. There is never a complete victory. This isnt a war with a definable end. This is the Cold War, but the enemy has all the same resources you do, and your every brain cell is a double agent. You cannot win, you can only soldier on, learning new ways to tell the messages from your own internal government apart from those of your traitorous double agent neurons and new ways to short circuit the mechanisms that allow the spies to undermine your defenses. As a fellow soldier in this eternal war on mental health, I salute the strength it took him to live publicly and right out loud for as long as he did. I salute his stolen moments of joy. I salute his giant heart. I salute the room he made for others in his struggle. And today, knowing he has lost his personal war, I grieve for his exhaustion and his isolation, and I offer up my love to those who loved him and those he loved. It is never comfortable to be the one who escapes a battle mostly unharmed when your comrade in arms does not, but sometimes, that choice is not your own to make. Rest well, Mr. Williams. I hope that the battle you fought is truly over now and you know peace at last.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 20:49:26 +0000
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