Drowning

From my earliest memories, I have battled the demon of depression.  At times I have allowed it to consume me. At others, I have been able to banish it, send it to exile, if only for a short while. But even in the moments I have been able to cage it, lock it tightly away where no one could see it, it was always there. I hear it rattling around in the far reaches of my mind in the dark hours of sleep when my closed eyes can’t silence my thoughts.  It calls to me and pulls me in with its hot breath on my skin, its long arm stretched through the bars of the weak prison I locked it behind years ago.  It gently slides its icy hand around my throat reminding me that it still has control.  

I have fought back against it with pills and herbs and sheer force of will. I have used hundreds of tiny needles seeking to draw its poison flowing through my veins. I have exercised it and exorcised it. Sometimes it has even let me believe I was winning. But it is always there like the tiny bright light on the end of a deadly tentacle hiding in the darkest depths. It lives in my spine like a virus always waiting for my inevitable moments of weakness to emerge again.  And they do.  They always do. 

Life throws us all curve balls, takes away the things and people we hold dear, reminds us constantly that we are flawed, punctuates our public failures, and highlights our fears. Then depression preys on us in those moments of trial.  And if we are not very careful the disease will take from us more than the joy of our days but the number of them we have on this earth as well. 

Depression is a thief. It steals the clarity of daylight relegating you to the darkness.  In the stillness of your isolation, it whispers that you are a failure, worthless, alone, unworthy. At its least, it strips your hours of their usefulness and at its worst, it steers you recklessly down the road to your own demise.  

There was a poem in my college days by Stevie Smith that always resonated with me. I carried the words far into my adult life; “I was much further out than you thought, and not waving but drowning”. But how do you know when someone you love is drowning or even when you yourself are the one frantically gasping for air before it is too late? 

It is difficult for others to see the damage of depression because it is well hidden. I have learned to hide my depression from those around me but worse from myself as well, to pretend it is just a bad day or a hormone fluctuation. I have had people comment on my social media that I appear to be “living my best life”. But that is the false mirror I show to the world.  I appear to be waving when, in fact, I am drowning. 

With depression, you will bleed out from desperation long before anyone sees a physical wound. From the exterior you appear normal, okay.  No one sees the devastation underneath. Our quiet yet frantic words attempting to reach out may appear expected, casual and in no way urgent or alarming. We are often ill-equipped to recognize the markers of our own demons much less those of the ones we love.

At the end of my shift many years ago, a coworker came to me.  I knew he was suffering with some family issues and struggling with his own depression. He stood on the other side of my desk as I cleaned up not even making eye contact with him. “I cannot live without my family.” One statement spoken with what seemed to be reflection from his heart over the weeks prior.  I replied quickly with some basic sentiment expressing sympathy for his plight while continuing to organize my paperwork. 

He then leaned in across my desk and said “No.  I can’t LIVE without my family.  Do you understand what I am saying?” I looked up at him for probably the first time in the exchange. He looked sad, desperate, like he was begging me with his eyes to hear him.  I acknowledged that I did indeed understand. It turns out that I didn’t understand at all. We all say we can’t live without things, but it’s usually an over-dramatization, a figurative reference. Usually. But apparently, not always. 

He turned and walked out the door, drove his car through rush hour traffic to the pier, removed his jacket and jumped into the darkness of the churning sea.  His body was found by surfers days later tangled in some seaweed. 

I failed him.  I failed to listen intently to what was underneath his words. I failed to see behind his eyes, to offer help when he could not help himself. He was drowning. At that moment figuratively and then later literally. 

Of all the people there I don’t know why he chose me to speak his final words to. Maybe somewhere inside of him, he hoped I was the one capable of seeing because I had been at the same crossroads in my life because what was behind his eyes was behind mine as well.  But I was young and blind and although I heard his words, I missed the absolute screams of agony that were behind them. It was a hard lesson to learn. I was the last person he spoke to, the last person who had a chance to make a difference. I am haunted by it to this day almost 30 years later. 

My friend’s death is a heavy burden on my soul, a deep regret that will never go away. I always tell myself in my darkest hours that I would not ever put that weight on someone I love. But at that point of no return, the disease controls everything. It manipulates the mind and our desperate acts are not born of sanity. What is even worse is that we all have the capacity to end up in those same shoes.  

I am convinced that most people at some point in their lives, be it by the overwhelming circumstances of life, an unspeakable loss or simply the deep shadow of melancholy, retreat to the hollow walls of their damaged soul for answers. Alone in that darkness it is often difficult to find any. And for many the very fine line, the path on a razor’s edge between depression and suicide requires a mere whisper to slip helplessly into the abyss. 

That is a place I have been before and now find myself again facing a year of unemployment in a pandemic, the loss of a 30-year career, the collapse of the life I once knew. There has been no hope in sight for far too long and I am drifting further from the shore, rudderless, without direction in the building sea. I don’t see a way out of this.  I am in a place devoid of light, clarity or reason. I am unable to quiet my thoughts, focus my mind and navigate back to the shore. But I am at least skilled enough at my own disease to at least recognize it. 

Alone in the dark hours of night, I search for the suicide hotline, my finger hovering over the green dial button wondering what the person on the other end of the line could possibly say, what someone who doesn’t know me could offer that those who have loved me have not.  I choose to not press it, to not reach out. I stay there staring at the empty light from my cell phone for far too long with indecision.  But it has been indecision that has always kept me here. An ironic fear of failing at yet one more thing. For today I stay just on this side of life. Alone with these words in my journal.  

People say that suicide is a selfish act, but I have always believed it is more of a desperate act, the ultimate one, one born of immense struggle with the darkness that exists inside of all of us.

If you have personally never experienced that level of hopelessness, I can describe it as such. It alters your reality. It immerses you to your very breath in a sea of unending grief and pain. It numbs you with its cold shadow blocking all sunlight to your eyes. To people looking in it seems only that you have strayed in thought for a moment or that you seem sad. Most don’t know what to do or say so they remain silent and hope you “fix yourself” or “snap out of it”. Some reach out with their hands and their hearts unable to understand that you are possibly too far gone in that darkness to reach back.

I have experienced all perspectives on depression and suicide at many points in my life. I have been the one desperately reaching. I have been the one that has failed to reach. Sadly, I have also been the one who didn’t even realize I needed to reach. But too, in many my weakest hours, I have stood on the other side, deep in the chasm. I have been the one in the darkness unable to reach back, often not even knowing that was an option or that there was anyone even reaching back for me.

Possibly for some, there is no salve for the deepest of burns, no peace in the aftermath of heartbreaking loss, no moment of silence from the unending buzzing in your head begging for an end to the suffering. Suicide is the worst death because it is the one that is seemingly preventable yet happens at an alarming rate that has only increased in the wake of the pandemic. It is a death with no answers and no resolve.

If the evil of this world enjoys death, then suicide is surely its favorite. It snuffs the life of the one too lost in shadow to see a way out, but it also irrevocably alters the lives of the people left behind in a way that other deaths do not. It breathes the cloud of agony deep into the veins of everyone whose life thread was bound to theirs. It leaves nothing in that emptiness and loss but questions; the most devastating of all “what could I have done to change this?” And like that awful song stuck in your head it plays there forever with no release, you scream it daily into the empty air and there is no reply.

We are all connected in this world, bound to each other. We should hurry less through our day and look around us. We should reach out and back the best we know how. We should strive for kindness and connection. Where there are no answers, let us be the answer to each other. We need to see each other deeply and not just in a glance. But above all, we need to recognize that no matter how much we reach out, no matter how much we see someone is drowning, it is often impossible to reach them. And that isn’t anyone’s fault. It is just the horrible reality of this terrible disease.