Darkness and, maybe, a little hope

Some comments, from the distance of years, on my previous post:

Yes, I wrote that in the midst of shock and pain and sorrow.

And that sorrow was compounded two weeks later, when the boy's father also killed himself.

I've known this family since I was a teenager, and I'm still friends with them. I saw what these actions did to them -- brothers/uncles, sister/aunt, mother/grandmother.


As an atheist, I don't believe in an afterlife (or judgment/reward/punishment), so I have no solace that suicide brings peace, only an ending. But it produces so much more pain in those left behind. Did we cause this? Did we not love him enough? What did we do wrong? How could we have stopped him?

The boy's father probably asked himself all these questions and more. And whatever answers he came up with, they weren't enough to cut through the grief. He felt the only thing he could do was join his son in death.

I've had good discussions with people on suicide since then. I'm pretty sure most of the people I know have gone through the valleys of true depression. Some show it; some don't. The Spalding Grays vs. the Robin Williams types.

Am I more forgiving now? Maybe.

Does suicide still cut me like a knife? Yep.

Do I really believe that if you fight through it, it actually does get better? Yes. Yes, I do.

When I moved to California in 1990 and first saw the amazing sweep of light and detail in the Southwest deserts, I thought, if only Van Gogh had pushed through those hard years and made it to this amazing landscape, he might have been OK.

But at the same time, I was fighting through my own depression. I found friends there, and interesting work, and great food, and challenging college courses, and the desert, and the ocean. Ah, the ocean. Yet the darkness was always with me.

I hung on, lived my time in the sun, moved back home to be with my ailing mother, lived another 20 years there, and developed a new set of friends. Some of those friends also knew the darkness. And they encouraged me to try antidepressants again, despite a bad experience with them a couple of decades ago (very rare allergic reaction). I did. And ... it changed my life. It saved my life.

So thank you, those who are willing to talk about the darkness, and to be there, and to love.

I hope I can be one of you. I hope baring all this brokenness in this tiny blog might help somebody.

It's a cliche, but yes, it does get better. Hold on. Talk. Listen. Try medication, meditation, therapy; and keep trying. There is something there for you, and we're all better off with you in the world. Really.