It’s 2am and I cannot sleep.
I have been lying in bed for the better part of three hours. My mind racing, my anxiety levels through the
roof and my heart broken into a thousand pieces around me. I cannot calm the things that haunt me. I am tired of medicating myself with pharmaceuticals.
So instead of sleeping, I write, because
it is my therapy. I cannot listen to the
silence of the bedroom. It’s
maddening. I want to scream. My mind is
everywhere.
As I lay there, feeling entombed in my body and my bedroom, my
mind instantly replays a variety of different things I’ve seen on the internet
over the last week or so. Primarily in regards to Robin Williams. I find the lack of respect for his death
highly understandable. He committed
suicide. He did it. He caused his own death. He had a choice. He took the easy way out. He was a coward.
It may seem as if I agree with those statements. But I don’t.
In fact, I quite disagree. As I
lie in my bed feeling the overwhelming rush of bile build up in my stomach
fueled by fear and stress and lack of control, I know all too well what he must
have felt. He had zero control. If I could control the very feelings I just
described that rush through my body, I would gladly take that responsibility. But they are uncontrollable, and I am left to
deal with them. Just me.
I want to let anyone reading this understand that what you
are about to read, it going to “get real.” Because I have something that needs
to be said. And hiding behind a partial truth
doesn’t do my story any justice. But the truth of the matter is that until about
three months ago, I also felt that someone that took their own life was
selfish, lacked self-control and had zero respect for their loved ones. That
was until I felt so out of control of my own life and my own body that I simply
didn’t want to feel that way anymore.
Sure, I have felt sadness but never such a strong sense of despair and
personal demise. At the worst of times,
it is wholly disabling.
We live in a society where community is measured by income
brackets and tax returns. Hopefully, if
you are lucky enough to play every move right, you will live a happy life, in
perfect health, surrounded by all the luxury you can find in life. But those of us who weren’t able to find that
are left to fight a helpless battle when something goes wrong. Or at least that’s how it feels.
The reality of my life (and everyone’s life for that matter)
is that one day, I am going to die. However, in my case, if I don’t have surgery,
I will end up dying much younger. The
tumor will eventually cause my central nervous processes to stop functioning
and I will stop being able to breath.
See, now, here the reality of this situation. I am standing at a crossroads in my life that
most people never know. If I don’t do
anything and I don’t have surgery, I know almost exactly how I will die.
So let’s start that as the base of my equation. Although I am not considered terminally ill,
I have a medical condition that can currently kill me. And no one can say for sure that it won’t before
surgery either. Now, at 39 years old, I didn’t
exactly plan for my own mortality to come sneaking up on me. No one really does. I wasn’t ready to takes months off of
work. As it stands right now, even with disability
(which is an absolute joke when you look at what you’ve paid into the system
versus what you get from it when you need it), I stand to financially lose
everything. I have no idea how I will
pay my health insurance, doctor’s bills, rent, car payment, car insurance, credit
card, student loans, plus buy groceries.
I’m not considered disabled because I can still work, but I
can’t work as much as I used to because realistically I’m disabled. But not according to our governmental
standards. And social programs sometimes
take months to get approved for, but I’m not allowed to apply for those because
I’m not, in accordance to those programs, yet in need. So while I’m dealing with
the fact that I’m unable to feel the left side of my body and that I have a
massive tumor overtaking my spinal cord, I also have to deal with the weight of
financial burdens with no stress relief. If I declare bankruptcy, which is more
than likely my path, it will take me years to overcome that stigma.
And that’s when the light bulb flickers at me. What’s the point? Why go through any of it
all? Why have the surgery? Why put
myself in a horrible position to struggle for the rest of my life when I can simply
not deal with any of it? Why should I continue to lay in my bed night after
night scared, depressed, and fearful for my future? Why should I have to deal
with insensitive tool bags that are more concerned with their collections quotas
over my past due bills rather than the fact that person on the other end of the
phone is dealing with a real life and death situation? And the answer is, is that
I have a strong mind. I deal with it,
because I was designed to deal with it. But, short of being homeless and unemployed,
my situation is still pretty gnarly.
For every moment of someone’s life that you see, there are a
thousand moments that you don’t see. We let
people see the best of our worlds because that’s what we are trained to
do. But I’m here to tell to remind you
that what you see is almost never the reality.
And that’s the problem when a celebrity like Robin Williams takes his
own life. The public sees only what it
was allowed to see. Yet, it judges based
on those limited life glimpses rather than with a full book of facts at its disposal.
And as I have wrestled with my own
mortality, my own health and a huge mountain of obstacles in my path, I feel that I can safely say that I’m pretty sure why he chose
to end his own life.
We forget that the brain is a delicate organ with a delicate
balance. And just as someone can have an
unhealthy heart, or stomach, or spinal cord, a human can also have an unhealthy
brain. Depression affects someone with an unhealthy
mind like an eating disorder affects someone with a displaced body image. It doesn’t matter how beautiful you think
that girl is, she doesn’t see it. Her
brain doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to in that regard. For someone that has a healthy mind, it seems
like an easy fix. Eat some food, tell
yourself you’re pretty, and get over it.
But mental disorders don’t work that way. Psychology is such a foreign and fairly
unknown science. Doctors can’t just make
someone’s brain work the right way. That
science hasn’t been developed or mastered yet.
I have hope that my surgery will go without a hitch, I will
eventually overcome the mountain of financial stress and I will move forward with
my life. Despite my heartbroken sob fest
at 2am in my kitchen, I don’t have any plans to end my life. I have things to do. And I have a strong willed, healthy mind that
makes me understand that I have reasons to move forward. Now, my spinal cord on the other hand…well,
no matter how healthy my mind is, my poor compressed spinal cord is no match for
the growing cystic tumor at its mercy.
Luckily for me, neurology is far more advanced than psychology. So, my
life has a fighting chance.
I’m lucky. When my moments sink to their darkest, my brain produces
the right chemicals, I kick myself in the pants for acting like a whiney baby
(see the first portion of the blog for an example) and I kick things into
action. Because even though my heart and
my soul are sinking, my brain is hard at work literally saving my own
life. And for all that Robin Williams
had – talent, money, charm, humor, intelligence, heart, drive, passion... what
he didn’t have was the one thing he needed the most to get through those tough
times.
So when you hear of someone suffering from a mental disorder
and they take their own life, rethink your instinctive reaction. Avoid words like selfish, coward, loser,
pathetic, and weak. Those are adjectives
that describe the closed minded individuals who chose to not see the scientific
basis behind depression and other mental disorders rather than the terms to describe
someone afflicted with some of the most scary and unfamiliar medical diseases yet
to be tackled by the medical community. Instead,
when you hear of that amazing person, like Robin Williams, was no longer able
to battle against their disease, take solace in the fact that your mind is
strong. Because one day, another part of
your body may not be as lucky. And you’ll be so thankful that healthy mind of
yours is there to save you.
