PREFACE: I really struggled with whether or not I should write this. Then I struggled again with whether or not I should share it. Talking about these things makes me feel very vulnerable and exposed, which aren’t exactly feelings that I enjoy. I started writing this essay a few weeks ago, and then edited it and added to it today. It’s not perfect. Not by a long shot. But these are dark days, and I know that there are many people out there who are fighting for their lives, so it felt relevant and important to speak my truth and be honest. I hope you get something from it. If not, at least writing it was cathartic for me.
I’m not really one for publicly mourning celebrity deaths. Fuck, who am I kidding? I’m not really one for publicly mourning at all. Grief is a deeply personal, private emotion for me, and I prefer not to share it with others. But this isn’t a piece about grieving. Not really. This piece is more about how I’ve been personally affected by two high-profile suicides that have happened recently – Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain.
Now, I know there is no shortage of think pieces about these people and their deaths. And I’m not really going to wax nostalgic about what each of them meant to me because to be honest, neither one really made a great impression on my life. Sure, I have a few Kate Spade accessories (I’m a sucker for clean lines and whimsical details), but most of them were bought after she stepped away from her company. And as a person who is interested in food, I’ve obviously heard of Anthony Bourdain, even though I’ve never actually seen an episode of his show. This piece isn’t about how I’m going to fill a hole that they left in my life, because such a hole doesn’t exist.
No, this piece is about aspiration. Or rather, what happens when you have to face the reality that even if you get exactly what you want, you might still not be happy.
I’ve struggled with depression my whole life. I’ve definitely had my ups and downs, but at my worst, I was thinking about killing myself every day. I was in my early 20s and I felt like my life was falling apart around me. It was so bad that I slept through my finals in my second year of college. I slept through everything, really, except for work. I knew I needed to be able to pay my rent so that I could continue to have someplace to sleep in peace until I finally worked up the nerve to end things. That’s really what it felt like. When I first started noticing that my depression was growing harder to manage – when I first started thinking about killing myself – I spent most of my free time and mental energy trying to think of reasons why I shouldn’t take my own life. But after awhile, when nothing seemed to help, my mentality shifted. Instead of focusing on reasons to live, I spent my time trying to steel my resolve to finally end it all. I just wanted peace. I wanted to quiet my brain. And when sleeping for 14+ hours a day still wasn’t enough to quell my demons, I busied myself with trying to figure out how to end things in the quickest, most painless way possible. (You know you’re close to hitting bottom when you start googling “What is the least painful way to commit suicide?” Spoiler: There isn’t one.)
During this time, I did not reach out to my friends. For those of you who don’t know me very well and are wondering where the hell my family was during this time, well, that’s a long story for another day. (It’s worth noting that my mother did know that I was struggling. However, she absolutely forbade me from seeking psychological help because, and I quote, “Any therapist you see is just going to blame me for your problems!” How right she was…) One of the most insidious aspects of my extreme depression was that I was depressed because I felt completely and utterly alone. But I was also completely incapable at the time of trying to reach out for help. I had convinced myself that my friends wouldn’t like me anymore because I was sad all the time. I felt like asking for help or even comfort made me a burden to them. But worst of all, I felt like the fact that no one had seemed to notice I wasn’t around anymore meant that I never really mattered to them in the first place. I told myself daily that no one would miss me, and that made the idea of killing myself seem much less terrible. I walked my ass right up to the edge of the proverbial cliff and tried desperately to convince myself to jump off. But deep down, I still felt a tiny spark of life that wasn’t ready to go out. Thankfully, the help I needed finally came, in the form of one friend who recognized what I was going through and pushed me to go to therapy. Eventually, after a great deal of hard, emotional work, a few months of prescription anti-depression medication, a hell of a lot of stubbornness, and the discovery of a survival instinct I didn’t know I possessed, I started to see a light at the end of my tunnel. I started wanting to live again. Waking up didn’t feel so horrible. I called my friends and rejoiced in the fact that they seemed earnestly happy to hear from me. Slowly but surely, I started to rebuild my life.
Of course, that wasn’t the end of it. Depression rarely just goes away. There’s a constant ebb and flow. Good days and bad days. Good years and bad years. But at least after that incredibly dark period, I knew how to spot my own warning signs. So when I started headed down that road again a few years later, I sought help before it got out of hand. These days, I feel pretty good about my life. I have a wonderful, supportive husband, a beautiful home, and two goofy but lovable dogs. I’m planning for the future. I’m planning for a family. But I’d absolutely be lying if I said I didn’t still struggle with my demons. As recently as last year, I found myself feeling, once again, like I could just disappear without anyone really missing me. That seems to be the negative belief/emotion that I always come back to – that I’m just not special enough for anyone to care if I disappeared forever. I don’t know why that’s where my mind wants to go when it breaks, but I wish I could figure out how to stop it. Even though I know it’s not true, the feeling of it never really goes away completely.
Which brings me back to the premise of this piece. If I’m being brutally honest, there has always been a part of me that believed that I could beat my depression by becoming a better version of myself. Because I’m a naturally ambitious person, this often lead me to believe that if I were more successful in life, I would be truly happy. If I made a name for myself, had a notable career, was financially wealthy and well-respected, then I wouldn’t be so depressed all the time. Perhaps this seems shallow or superficial, but I really just wanted to feel like I was “the best” at something. I guess I figured that being wildly successful would make me feel whole. At other times in my life, I thought that if I could just connect with people better then I would be happier. I thought if I could figure out how to be more interesting and more edgy, then everything would be easier. I’ve always been attracted to people who seem to be effortlessly cool. They have great fashion, are into obscure or interesting music, they make amazing art and lead amazing lives, all without appearing to have to work very hard at it. I, on the other hand, have always been the opposite of effortless. I try SO hard. In fact, I’m haunted by the notion that everyone knows and judges me for trying TOO hard. This isn’t helped by the fact that I’m a big, loud, clumsy person who is never quite sure whether what I’m saying or doing is socially acceptable or completely off-putting. Also, I have almost no chill. Basically, what I’m saying is that I’ve spent a good portion of my life believing that if I were more successful and just generally cooler, I would be happy enough to stop wanting to die. Which made it extremely disheartening to see two people who pretty much embodied the two sides of my “Perfect Life” coin decide to take their own lives.
Kate Spade was incredibly successful in her career. She embodied a type of “upper-class” sophistication that I could never even hope to accomplish in my lifetime. From the outside, she seemed to have it all – a beautiful family, and happy marriage, and a legacy. She was a household name. And she must have been dealing with tremendous emotional pain. Anthony Bourdain was universally respected, both by his peers and by the general public. He was the epitome of cool – passionate, edgy, and unabashedly authentic. And he must have been dealing with tremendous emotional pain. As a person who often looks outward rather than inward for solutions to problems and for emotional reassurance, I found it horribly distressing to think that two people, whose lives I basically aspired to have, were so profoundly unhappy. The fact that there’s no step-by-step guide or handy to-do list of accomplishments that will get me to a state of consistent happiness is really fucking difficult for me to grasp. I’m made seriously uncomfortable by the feeling that I can’t work my way out of depression, and yet deep down, I’ve always felt in my bones that there was never an easy solution. I guess I’ve always known that looking for answers outside of myself was never going to get me very far. But dammit, I wanted to believe! I feel like a 5 year old kid who just figured out that Santa isn’t real and that grown-ups are mostly liars. I feel cheated out of a good and easy life that never really existed in the first place.
I find myself asking, “So what now? Where do I go from here?” Early on in this essay I talked about filling a hole that didn’t exist, but now I’m wondering if maybe there was a hole after all… A hole where my aspirations used to live. A hole where I kept my dreams of being a perfect person and having a perfect happy life. And now I’m being forced to come back to the real world, with its sadness and imperfection. With its pain and regret. Where even my happiest memories and moments are tinged with a little bit (or a lot) of sorrow. But I suppose that’s okay. I’ve always found a certain beauty in the darkness, and I’ve learned that a lot of the things I used to consider “flaws” are really just the special parts of a person that make them interesting and unique. I guess it’s time to apply that appreciation to myself. I guess I have to stop pretending that my struggle with depression is something that can be fixed. That maybe, managing my depression just means filling my life with enough love and joy that the bad parts don’t feel so overwhelming. I’m trying to learn how to be nicer to myself, to forgive myself for my shortcomings. It’s not easy, but I’m used to things not being easy. I’m learning new coping mechanisms every day that help me to be better prepared for when life throws me a curve ball that makes me feel like I want to die. One of those coping mechanisms is being honest – with myself, with the people I love, and with the world at large. We’re all coping. We all have our own struggles.* But through our struggles we gain strength. I know that first hand. I also know that I want to live. So I’ll end this musing with a quote, courtesy of disco goddess Gloria Gaynor, that I thinks sums up my current beliefs: “I will survive. As long as I know how to love, I know I’ll stay alive.”
* If you’re in the midst of your own struggle, especially if it seems like it’s life or death, please know that I love you, okay? You’re not alone and you’re not a burden. If you call me, text me, email me, comment, etc… I will answer. If you’re reading this, you matter to me. Even if you don’t know me personally, find a way to reach me. I want to know you. I want you to know that you are special and beautiful and that the world is better with you in it. You deserve to know that, and you deserve to feel loved. Thank you for reading and for being you.
Eff That S! 