No stall tactics here, because for once in artless way, I couldn't come up with anything, and I can usually stall and tapdance with the best of them.
God, I do
so understand not wanting to talk about suicide. The thought of ending one’s
life is fraught with just so many triggers, both atavistic and psychological.
The idea that by our own hand we choose to cease to exist is just beyond
contemplation. I get up to the idea of it, and my mind just skitters aound it, alá
crazy bumper car style. I am Catholic and being raised so, the Jesuit priests
made it very clear that I would be forever cast out and anathema if I killed
myself, so there’s that. I admit that when I was at my very worst
psychologically and when I couldn’t walk, the idea did cross my mind but it was
almost as an abstract, a “what if?” scenario. But the pain was there and as
tough as I may think I am, I really understand and sympathize with people who are in
that kind of pain.
My mother
after all, tried to take her own life when I was 7. I cannot imagine what kind
of hell she was going through for her to think abandoning her child to an alcoholic father was a good
idea, as kind as he was. I know she was truly, truly in deep misery. Andi-roo has suffered the
same intense pain. I weep for them and people like them. I just can’t imagine
the depths of suffering and misery. And then along come assholes who tell you shit like, “oh, you’re
just blue, pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” “Get over yourself; there are
other people who are worse off than you.”
When I
lived at Happy Acres, I had 2 roommates. One suffered from depression, the
other suffered from assholery. I was keeping an eye on the depressed one,
because she was becoming more and more withdrawn. I kept asking her if she
needed help. She kept saying no. The asshole kept needling her, telling her she
needed to get up, do this, do that, yada, yada. I told asshole to just mind her
own business. Finally, one night, the depressed one, O, came to me after dark.
A bunch of us were sitting on the front porch and O asked if I would call
someone for her. I pried it out of her that she was feeling suicidal. My other
friend H and JC sat with her while we waited for the ambulance. She held my
hand and was crying. Asshole told her she just needed to get it together. H and
I threw asshole off the porch. I’m so over that shit. I said, “go ahead, call
the police.” The women fought more than
the men over there. We got O to the hospital and Baker acted. We threw her a welcome home party when she came home. She's doing well now.
Anyway,
depression is a killer. It isolates a person from other people. It’s cunning
that way. Depression doesn’t go for the weak like most predators, either. I
notice that it takes the strong ones. The people who have gone on with out
complaint and have shouldered more than their share for years. Depression is
also an heirloom. Families pass it down from generation to generation. What a
legacy.
Depression
is no respecter of class, sex, race, creed or culture. I love the actor Zoë
Saldana. She is spectacular looking and fiery. She also suffers from
depression, as countless other artists do. It’s almost a requirement if you’re
in any performing art. Some asshat said something along the lines of “well, she’s
got a great career, money and a baby, what’s she got to be depressed about?”
Almost as bad as Tom Cruise and his stupid bullshit with Matt Lauer over Brooke
Shields after she talked about her post-partum depression. Tom was insistent
that she didn’t need pharmaceuticals to be “cured.” First off, Tom hasn’t a
uterus, second off Tom is a robot, I think.
The
creepy thing and the timing about all that? I had a gig with Chicago at the
Scientology Center over in Clearwater about the time all that shit happened. I had
just been released from the hospital the first time after suffering heart
failure, in 2004 and found myself playing this gig with a purse full of
psychotropics. The creepy part is this: the Scientologists have cameras
everywhere and I mean EVERYWHERE. They wanted me to surrender my purse on their
property. I had to have my manager intervene and I told them I would have them
slapped with a civil lawsuit so fast their heads would spin; I was in no mood
for their bullshit, but the psych meds were keeping me calm and helping my heart heal
too.
Depression
really is a bastard, as well as a bitch. Women suffer more than men, but men
suffer it and just as keenly as women. I go back to the reason I originally
wrote this. Andi-Roo. She is my heart. Without a heart, I can’t go on. Oh, I
could. But it wouldn’t be the same. We all have to have someone who we emulate.
She is a dear lady. I know she had an icky patch. We all do. When I have one, I
just kind of fluther through it, knowing that I will come through it. I do, and
it’s always better than it was before. I think this just hits such a nerve with
me, because I’m still haunted by the “what if?” What if my mother had
succeeded?
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