Robin Williams and the difficult discussion regarding depression.

I have a confession to make. I'm having a hard time getting over the death of actor/comedian Robin Williams. It is completely irrational, I know, since I did not know the man personally. How could the death of a complete stranger be so upsetting?

Well, the truth is he wasn't a complete stranger. He was part of a very unfortunate family I belong to as well.

Depression is a difficult conversation to have and an even more frightening admission to make. There are so many misconceptions about this disorder that anyone afflicted must muster a lot of fortitude to paint themselves with this particular brush. People who don't have depression see this as a personal weakness rather than an affliction. They see it as a character flaw, rather than a disorder.

Even people I respect, who are more intelligent and more well-read and more accomplished than your average human, get it wrong. And that's even more upsetting. These people, who would never expect someone with no legs to run the Boston marathon without artificial limbs, expect people with depression to "buck up" as if someone afflicted could do that through mere will alone.

The fact that Robin's life ended in suicide only makes this conversation that much harder. The shock, for some very notable people, turned to anger. How could he do this to his family? To his friends? To his fans? How could he be so selfish? So weak? Some even made the observation that he probably deserved to die if he felt that way, which helps NO one who is struggling with the same mental health issues.

People made snap judgments on his character, completely ignoring that an event like this is the perfect time to readdress the mental health issues that so often go undiagnosed in this country, MOSTLY because people believe the misinformation that surrounds these disorders. (My own belief is that things such as addiction and homelessness likely stem to undiagnosed mental health issues, and that the idea that they aren't "strong" enough to defeat this enemy on their own leads to even more self-destructive behavior.)

And I get it. When someone dies, we all feel a bit of helplessness. We don't know what to do or say to make the bereaved feel better. We don't know what to do to get over our own grief or lessen its sting. We're sent reeling by the shock, and floundering for a way to manage our own emotions, which run the gamut of sadness, anger and confusion. This is all exacerbated when the death in question is a suicide, because our own accountability gets called into question.

Why didn't we see what kind of pain he was in? What more could we have done to save him this horrible fate?

For many, to combat the feelings of failure on our part, we shift it back to the person who was suffering enough to do such a thing.

Looking at the reports, I'm not sure what could have been done. He was getting treatment, he was seeking medical intervention. It wasn't enough - and maybe that is what scares all of us the most.

ESPECIALLY those of us living with this disorder day after day.

Maybe that is the reason I can't think about Robin Williams and not dissolve into tears. I know his fate could have (and still could) easily be my own.

Last night BBC America aired the Doctor Who episode "Vincent and the Doctor." It was all the more poignant given our recent loss. A genius grapples with madness until the madness ultimately wins, and we lose someone astounding and important. I won't spoil the show if you haven't seen it (and you totally should, BTW,) but what Doctor Who did with that episode was genius in and of itself. By using symbolism, they showed depression as the invisible frightening monster it was, that only the person already trapped in the darkness could see. They also showed how all the love and positive uplifting in the world couldn't touch this medical condition and "save" someone from himself.

Depression is more than just simple sadness. It goes beyond turning the frown upside down and finding the silver lining on every dark cloud. It is a biological aberration in the brain that haunts its sufferers with dark thoughts of extreme sadness and apathy, hopelessness and worthlessness. It is as irrational as it is unrelenting.

Basically it is a disorder that lies to you about what you can and can't do, as well as who you are. And it runs on an endless loop in the brain with voices too loud to ignore. Little things become insurmountable, even an act as simple as brushing your teeth or getting out of bed. Every ache and pain is amplified to the point of acute misery, where adding day-to-day activity into the mix is unthinkable. Where one person can have a headache and still head to work, a person with depression can have a headache and not make it out of bed. It seems impossible to move or to think beyond brain signals that have gone haywire.

It turns up the dial on negative thoughts and emotions until you are buried beneath them all, with no real hope of making it back out again. The uninformed will call this lazy. Clearly they have no idea what it's like to fight through the painful matrix of the mind. When you hit a dead end in the maze, sometimes you need help finding your way back out again. Why does acknowledging you need that help and asking for it when it risks your character alone make anyone anything other than brave?

Uninformed people will also tell you that people who commit suicide are selfish, but as someone who has grappled with suicidal thoughts, I can tell you that isn't true. When you get to the point of suicide, your opinion of self is so low that it feels like a benevolent act to spare the world from who you are. You tell yourself that the people who love you would be better off without you, that you're too much trouble, you're too difficult or complicated.

And you know this is true because the person you are forced to live with day in and day out is too difficult and too complicated for YOU. (This also makes it hard to trust anyone else. If you can't trust the voices inside YOUR head to keep you safe, how can anyone outside of your skin love you enough to make up the slack?)

All you want to do is silence that voice and end that pain once and for all, and you think the world around you would be better off for it.

Those are the lies that depression tells. It is an insidious enemy that resides within one's own brain.

Medication helps to a point, but as anyone who has actually dealt with mental health issues will tell you, finding the right one is a roller coaster ride about as torturous as untreated depression. Certain meds make you feel like a zombie, and some even make those suicidal feelings worse. It could take months or years to find the right one for you, which will make diabolical depression lie to you even harder, telling you that you are beyond help so that you'll give up completely.

This would appear the case for Robin.

So you do the therapy and read the self-help books, maybe even try hypnosis or turn into the most vocal cheerleader for everything good and positive in the world. You can't entertain negativity, even for a second, or else you might lose your precious foothold on sanity. Every step forward is a step upward, and none of us can afford to miss even one.

Life knocks you back enough.

When someone wants to "vent" to me, or - for lack of a better word - whine about helpless situations, that's not just annoying. It's dangerous. It could potentially knock me down the slope to helplessness and despair. I've made it back up that slope (barely) so many times I can't afford to risk another topple. If you need help with depression, I'll steer you to professionals and I won't entertain that negative pity-party bullshit because I just can't. It's not you, it's me. I'll tell you all the positive things I have to yell inside my own head when I struggle with those same feelings. If you persist, I'll cease talking to you.

I have to. My life literally depends on it.

I have been to the edge two notable times in my life. And by edge, I mean Rose hanging over the bow of the Titanic, holding onto Jack for all she's worth so she doesn't disappear into the depths below kind of edge. The first time I was 13 years old. As many of you already know, I was sexually assaulted as a four-year-old. I kept that secret for nine painful years due to the inherent shame I felt for having gone with a stranger, and touched where no one was ever supposed to touch me until married. I felt so corrupted that when my father died when I was eleven, I felt that was my punishment. Clearly I wasn't supposed to be happy. I had been brought up believing in a wrathful, angry God all too willing to smite sinners... this was an easy lie to believe.

In the two years that followed, the pain of adolescence added to the volatile mix. Kids are cruel and adults weren't much better. Instead of recognizing the symptoms of my undiagnosed depression, I was treated like I was lazy and weak, which only made me feel even more worthless because these were things just beyond my will. By the time I was 13, I couldn't really see the light at the end of the tunnel. And if I did, I just assumed it was yet another locomotive destined to run me over.

I had people I loved and who loved me, but the pain and the fear were unbearable. Going to school, doing homework, doing chores, all simple tasks that we all do day after day felt like mountains to climb. When a friend of mine went through her own sexual assault experience, it was the final straw. Life was ugly and the only guarantee I had ever found was that more pain and fear would follow.

I took a knife from the kitchen drawer and sat at the dining room table. When someone contemplates suicide, it's a big deal. This is the end of the road. It becomes intrinsically ritualistic. You run what you're about to do over in your head as you work through your own thoughts of grief and mourning for the life about to be lost. You think about those you love and try your best to separate your soul from theirs to release them from the bondage of knowing you. It's bad enough that you are afflicted/cursed... but for those brave and wonderful souls around you who have to deal with your struggle, you feel the most guilt. They blessed someone horrible like you with love and kindness, and all you could give back to them was confusion and pain.

All you can see in that moment is that they'd be better off without you. They'd miss you, of course. They'd grieve. But one day they'd know you did the best thing for everyone.

It's not a selfish act at all. It's a desperate act. And it's painful as hell. There are no words I could use to help you empathize with that level of hopelessness. It goes beyond, "What am I going to do now?" You are too exhausted, mentally and physically, to muster any spark of ambition to move forward.

All you want is rest. Long, peaceful, silent rest.

I remember how it felt when I placed that cold steel against my wrist. Tears poured from my face as every emotion imaginable scrambled my brain. Before I could pull that knife across my skin, the phone rang. It was one of those mustard-yellow, rotary-dial Ma Bell phones mounted on the wall behind me with a fifteen-foot coiled (and usually tangled) cord. This was way before cordless telephones and caller ID. I had no way of knowing who was on the other end. And I'm not entirely sure what prompted me to answer, but I did. Surprisingly, I was met with the cheerful voice of my best friend.

I say surprisingly because my best friend never called me. We lived about 300 miles apart by this point, and his mother didn't allow him to make expensive long-distance phone calls. Instead we corresponded by letters, at least two a week, all that previous year, talking about the kinds of superficial things twelve and thirteen-year-olds talk about.

But this particular day, his mother had caved and allowed him to call. And he was overjoyed.

He was equally confused when I burst into fresh tears and sobbed so hard I could barely speak. When he asked what was wrong, I let the torrent free and explained everything. He was the first person I told about being raped, and the first person I told that I was contemplating the unthinkable.

He responded with tears of his own. I didn't know it at the time, but he was struggling with his sexual orientation. It was the early 1980s in the big ol Texas Bible Belt, and his struggle was just as silent and torturous as mine. The only thing he could confess to me was that he couldn't make it without me, and that was enough for me to set my knife down.

He saved my life that day, in an act I truly believe was divine intervention. And despite many other traumatic events that followed, I know I was lucky to be spared. Just look at what all I would have missed.

It is the main reason why there was only one serious attempt to follow, when I nearly lost my kids - which are the main reason I breathe.

Fast forward to 1999. I had been through quite a bit by then, including domestic abuse, homelessness and the death of a child. But it took a custody issue with my two surviving children to nudge me back out onto the ledge. I had lost custody due to the abuse we all suffered when my first husband, Dan, had been undiagnosed with bipolar disorder. That, compounded with the death of my third son, was too much to take. My marriage was in ruins, I was feeling overwhelmed by my adult family obligations, and work was hell with an emotionally abusive boss who regularly used my ego as her punching bag. The voices in my head were now being spoken outside my head, and, again, they were easy lies to believe. I still had Jeff, but he had his own life in Texas, with a partner and a career.

I truly felt like the world and everyone in it would be better off without me, since my emotional tank was on empty and I had nothing else to give.

Like before, the plan was very ritualistic. I planned to go to my son Brandon's grave, take a bottle of sleeping pills and slip into eternal slumber right beside him.

I was once again saved by a phone call, this time a stranger I met on the Internet. Our conversations usually were lighthearted and fun, but this time it was as if he knew I was in crisis. He insisted on calling and, like before, I couldn't hide the pain anymore. That one act of kindness broke through the dam. By daybreak I had abandoned my plan. The next day I was at the doctor's office, getting a prescription for anti-depressants. Therapy soon followed.

When I think of the pain Robin must have been going through in that moment, all alone, with no one there to pull him back from the abyss, my heart absolutely shatters. That he died at all sucks, but that I know how much he must have suffered to do it to himself is unbearable.

And I blame nobody. Not even Robin himself. If you expect anything about depression to make sense, it just won't. There is no one-size-fits-all treatment. There is no guarantee. There is only the struggle, which on some days is a lot harder than others.

He slipped away and we couldn't catch him. And that sucks.

BUT... here's the good news, and an important part of Robin's legacy that he leaves behind. We can talk about depression now. We can bring that dialogue into the forefront. We can recognize that success has dick to do with this medical condition, or happiness or even being a good, proactive, generous person that everyone loved. Some may even feel, "If it could claim someone like Robin, what hope is there for me?" Because it happened to Robin MEANS that there is hope for you. It eradicates the lie that there's something uniquely wrong with you alone. It afflicts millions upon millions, no matter where they are in life.

And guess what? There are far more success stories than there are tragedies.

It also demolishes the lie that it is an act of selfishness or of weakness. Robin was 63 when he died, and a lifelong sufferer of this disorder. It takes immeasurable strength to live with depression. If you can raise your head or function in any way when your brain has slowed you down to slow motion while the rest of the world is in fast forward, that is a mark of your strength. If you can walk outside your door when you have the crippling anxiety that can go hand in hand with depression, it is a triumph to be celebrated.

Look at all Robin was able to do despite his condition.

These victories will always outnumber your slumps. I was diagnosed with chemical depression 15 years ago, after suffering with it at least 18 years before that. It has affected every area of my life. Yet I have managed to raise a family, make a successful career for myself and have long-standing relationships. The disease never stopped lying to me that I'm a worthless piece of shit that deserves all the bad luck it felt like I suffered. It still tries to get me to look at all the negative stuff, even while the positive pile just kept growing and growing.

Every day I can look at the positive and refute the negative is a victory, even if I can only manage a second.

People who follow my FB page know that I always try to share positive, uplifting messages. What you may not know is that they are 100% directed at me. This is me rewiring my own mental dialogue, to battle this disorder for one more hour, one more day. It was a battle I never wanted to really share before, because the last thing I ever want to be described as is weak, but after Robin, I know it's my responsibility to put another face on this disorder, another voice introduced into the dialogue with personal history with this ongoing fight.

If I can, I want this intensely personal, soul-bearing scary blog to be that phone call at the right moment for someone else. I want to be that voice of truth and understanding piercing through the painful fog of lies and hopelessness.

If you or someone you know are battling feelings of worthlessness, sadness and apathy towards those things that usually make your life worth living, take this test: Screening for Depression, and then follow up with your medical professional. Fair warning, some professionals do not fully understand what you're going through either. I tried to talk to my medical doctor about my social anxiety and was told that I was "self-centered" and "needed to find God." Leave these folks in the rear-view mirror. They cannot help you.

But help is still out there. Lots of it. And more every day.

If talk-therapy and the first prescription aren't enough, TELL YOUR DOCTOR. If he or she can't help, find another one. Depression will lie to you and tell you that you cannot be saved. But that isn't true. What worked for someone else may not work for you and vice versa. Depression carves out its own individual path for people, and they cannot be compared one to the other. Walk your own path. Do what is best for YOUR health. It's not a failure. It's not a weakness. It's a treatable medical condition that many simply do not understand. The only failure or weakness is letting the opinion of fools prevent you from getting the help you need.

SO DON'T GIVE UP. You may not see it, but you are worth so much more than you know. People don't love you in spite of your complications. They love you, complications and all. And their lives will be darker if you're gone, filled with a helplessness and regret you can't even fathom.

If you are in your own moment of crisis with no one to talk to, call a hotline to speak to a professional educated to handle your situation.

And thank you, dear, sweet Robin, for giving so many so much hope and joy and light throughout your life. You made a difference for so many, and that took the most strength and selflessness of all. May it be the legacy you leave in your spectacular, but brief, existence. Go with love, and rest in peace at last. <3