I fired up my dying laptop just to make this entry. That's how important it is to me to get these thoughts out today.
The death of actor/comedian Robin Williams has created a lot of buzz throughout various media sources/social networks in the past 24 hours. You have those mourning the loss of a man that gifted us with his talents (or rather mourning his talents as a lot of us don't personally know the man), and those that have decided to grace us from their cloud high in the sky with their ignorant statements about how inconsiderate R. Williams was to take his own life.
I'm trying really hard not to be a hypocrite and bash those people bashing the man for his action. I can't understand how they must have felt their entire lives to just be. To live every day with an emotion, whether it be happy, sad, or content. To always be grateful for living another day. In turn, they cannot understand what it's like to have more bad days than good. To actually be saddened to awaken each morning. They can't comprehend what it's like to go day after day pretending to be content or happy when in actuality there's nothing but a void of life within.
This fantastic woman wrote an article on the subject matter of Robin Williams' suicide and it's beautifully written. I've attached it for your reading, if you wish.
Let me give you a little background on me, my life, and why I feel the way I do about this topic. Or you can just stop reading if you can't handle the controversial topic.
I was raised an only child. I had a different version of "Only Child Syndrome" than one thinks of when they hear that title. I wasn't a spoiled little brat. Yes, I got everything I wanted, but the problem was getting me to say I wanted it. I'm not saying I was a perfectly innocent child that never threw any fits, because I did. I just didn't feel like I deserved any of the things my dad tried to buy me.
I was a very lonely child. I have always been odd and because of it, had few friends and got made fun of a lot. My childhood friends had brothers and sisters, but there were a lot of issues that went into some of those friendships. One in particular I refuse to discuss for very personal reasons. The biggest obstacle was my friends' parents not liking me for whatever reasons. One mother did a lot that she could so that I could not play with her children and to this day, I still have no idea why. Know how I learned all the combos and fatalities to the first couple of Mortal Kombat games? Because I didn't have anyone to play the game with, I played all the two player games by myself. I even perfected playing Super Mario World on two player by myself. With my feet. That's right. I learned how to play with two controllers using my hands and my feet. So it's with my feet I learned all of the fatalities on Mortal Kombat. First by accident, after that I just paid attention to what my feet did to pull it off.
Since there wasn't much playing I could do by myself, I read a lot. Probably too much. That didn't help the teasing from other kids. I never realized until adulthood that I had always been sad and lonely, even as a child. I didn't have a terrible childhood, just an unfortunate one. I spent most of my time with my mother. I adored my mother and thought she was the best thing ever all the way up into my twenties. Despite everything, I always thought she was Number One. I thought the world of her. As a kid, I didn't see that my mom had her own problems she was dealing with. I only knew about the ones she told me. She had her moments that I never understood. She would be laughing and joking with me and I felt loved. Included in life. That's what love felt like to me. It felt like being included in life. At seven and eight years old and up. That should have been recognized by someone. Granted, I was very shy, but when someone made that effort to include me so much in what was going on around me, I felt loved. Then, a few minutes could go by or hours, but she would be in a terrible mood. I'd try to cheer her up by bringing up one of the things we thought was so hysterically funny earlier, and she would look at me like I was retarded.
Do you know what it feels like to have your mother make you feel like you were genuinely alive and happy to be that way only for her to look at you like you were stupid when you tried to re-live that moment?
That's when it started. My striving for her approval just so she would never look at me like that again. I felt worthless. I felt stupid. At around eight or nine is when I started daydreaming about my death and hoping I wouldn't wake up in the mornings. I didn't feel like I would be missed and I just couldn't take the pain I was feeling anymore. And at that age I didn't understand the pain or why I felt it. I just knew it hurt and I wanted it to end. I also didn't know what suicide was or how to do it. I would sink down into the bathtub and let out all of the air in my lungs. When that hurt too much, I knew that wasn't the way I wanted to go.
My mom had a best friend that I loved. She was always around, would randomly bring me gifts just because she thought of me, and included me. I still love that woman to this day. My dad had a friend like that, too.
My parents split up. Not uncommon then, and certainly more common than it should be today. I wasn't upset by the divorce. I knew they shouldn't have been together. They drove me nuts. They were just so wrong for each other for so many reasons. The arguing, the inconsideration for each other and, hell, for me. I just hated it. But this is crucial for what's to come. I was the one that helped my mother. She cried in my arms and I soothed her. At twelve years old. I coddled her, gave her advice, told her it wasn't her fault. And very selfishly relished in her including me and making me feel like I was needed. That became love to me then. Being included and needed.
I happily moved to another town with her. I couldn't play with my best friend because her mother wouldn't let her, so what did it matter? I wasn't missing anything, except for the kids that teased me. But my mother was a young woman in her early thirties at that time. She was pretty and could be fun. Therefore, she found a new man quick enough. She didn't need me anymore. She didn't include me. She wasn't home a lot and left me to fend for myself. I tried to have as much fun as I could, and I had a couple of friends there. It was just getting to them that could be the problem since Mom wasn't home a lot and I never knew how to reach her. Then we moved in with the boyfriend where he didn't have a phone and lived out in the middle of no-where. He had two neighbors nearby and one a little further down the dirt road at the plantation.
Occasionally, she let me back in. She would take me shopping and I felt like I could survive again. Most of the time was spent in my room at his house though. They didn't want me around. I'm not just saying that. They would "suggest" that I go to my room or go stay at a friend's house more often than not. They got exasperated if I didn't go. Then I witnessed that man trying to kill her. I ran to the closest neighbor in my bare feet, tears streaming down my face, and this horrible screeching sound I didn't recognize coming from my throat.
We packed up and moved out. What did I get from all of that? The joys of anxiety attacks. (Here's why the whole divorce thing was relevant, it tied to the anxiety attacks. Needed for future reference.) Life was tolerable. That's when I realized was feeling empty felt like. From the age of thirteen to seventeen, I felt devoid of life. Around seventeen, I assumed it had to be the weather. We had moved when I was fourteen from Georgia to Indiana. I chalked my lack of feelings up to the gray skies and dead fields of Indiana winters. So I moved back to Georgia where I was reunited with my childhood best friend. With the freedom of being driving teenagers came the freedom of being able to hang out. And I made new friends. One of them became my best guy pal. He became my brother. His family adopted me and I loved them.
Still no feeling. I tried everything from trying to live like a teenage girl to cutting myself just to feel something. Anything. I remember nights laying in front of the fireplace, my arms wrapped around an oversized teddy bear, blood soaking through my sweatshirt and caking on the bear. Still nothing. I eventually told my affectionately-termed Bubby what was going on in my head. When it got really bad, I would drive to his house and he would wrap his arms around me and beg me not to go. He never said where, he just asked that I not leave him. He would name off all the reasons he wanted me to stay. Sometimes that would do the trick, but sometimes I would leave his house as empty as I arrived.
I tried drinking. I tried sex. I tried going to college. I tried different jobs. I tried clubs. I tried drugs (okay, really just one, the other two were taken unknowingly). I tried relationships I shouldn't have and failed ones I should have tried to keep.
Even today, I still have the problem. I feel like I'm not good enough. I feel like I'm a failure. I feel like I'm just causing pain to everyone around me. Sometimes it's just the thought of my children and husband that keep me from doing anything. And there are times when I'm in too deep and I think of all the ways they would all be better off without me. It was easier when Pen was younger because I justified that she wouldn't remember me to know what she was missing.
I don't have a fear of guns because my cousin was shot (either by himself or by another) or because I was raised around too many of them. I have a fear of myself. I have more good days than bad days the past few years, but it can be as simple as a fight with the husband or just a morose day that can drag me down. Today is a hard day for me because I empathize with Robin Williams. I feel so much pain that he lived as long as he did with his suffering because I know what it's like. I feel for him and I feel for his family. It sucks to feel helpless and that's what happens to the family of the depressed. They feel helpless. Just like the depressed person. It's a disease that hurts everyone around for some reason or another.
And if you want to argue that it's selfish to want to end your suffering, then let me ask you this: Isn't it just as selfish to ask the suffering to keep living so you can have them? If someone was in daily pain from cancer eating away at their body, would you rather they live another twenty years in that pain just so you can have their presence? Depression is a like an emotional cancer. I'm not advocating suicide. I'm saying watch what you say and how you say it. Saying negative things to the sick doesn't make it any better.
I will always be here for you
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