January 2, 2013
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another goodbye
Before I do my annual State of the Troid entry, I have one last post to make for 2012.
An old friend from my law school days took his own life right before Christmas. He had struggled with depression for years, and he and life weren’t on good terms. His deep depression led to him losing his job, first in 2005, and again in 2006, and he stayed unemployed through the recession. His girlfriend of six years toughed it out with him through three years of anguish before she was unable to do it anymore. He gradually distanced himself from his friends and erased himself from the earth, and alternated between self-hatred, loneliness, despair, and anger. He spent some time in the hospital, but then figured out how to trick the doctors, and he refused to take meds or see a therapist, insisting that he either wasn’t worth the treatment, or that if he were a better person, then he wouldn’t need treatment.
He wasn’t always like that.
In law school, he was smart and silly and loyal and funny. We were already in the age of cell phones, yet I knew his phone number by heart, which means something, when your phone can remember all of your friends’ numbers for you. I could call him in the middle of the night, and if I was having a bad night (which was often the case in law school), he would grab whatever food or snacks he had handy (and since we were students, it was usually something like a carton of orange juice and a box of crackers), and he would come to my apartment and crack jokes and hang out so that I didn’t have to be alone with my sadness. When we were out with friends, having fun, he and I both derived endless glee from making terrible puns. He threw parties. He didn’t laugh at me when I made a batch of chili for our friends and forgot to add the beans. We were like kids together. His bedroom was very large for a student apartment in New York, and we would back up for a running start, hurtle across the room, and take flying, jumping leaps onto his bed. Until we broke it. He loved snowboarding and kickboxing. He was built like a fire hydrant. One time, he actually walked straight into a fire hydrant, which nailed him so hard that he fell over, clutching his crotch, laughing and crying at the same time. He loved telling funny stories about stupid things he had done, just to get a laugh. When I got out of the hospital, he didn’t judge me, but was sad that I hadn’t told him how much I had been struggling. When I told him I was moving away from campus, he asked me not to, saying that I was his best friend and that we would never see each other again, but when it was time for me to move, he helped me take apart my heavy furniture.
We drifted apart once he started dating his law school girlfriend (whom he dated for six years), although I periodically sent him emails to see how he was doing, with no response. When we finally got back in touch, he had already changed from the lighthearted, happy person I had known to a shadow of his former self, lost in a darkness he couldn’t imagine escaping. He was ashamed of himself, and of who he had become.
Could I have been a better friend to him? We had sporadic contact over the last few years, but his darkness was so deep and hopeless, and I’m not a psychiatrist, so I never knew what to say or do, or if what I said or did was helping or hurting him. The only thing I could tell was that he didn’t seem to be improving, and I was definitely crumbling with him. I sometimes felt like I was on a leaky lifeboat that could hardly support my own weight, and I didn’t think I could take on the weight another person’s anguish at the same time without having both of us go under. I feel guilty and ashamed for not having found a way to make him want to live, to try, to take his meds, to do something to fight the darkness. I of all people should know what that dark, howling, empty, lonely tunnel is like, and I should have done more. When I could, I talked to him, I sent him messages, I told him that I loved him and that many of his old friends that he had lost touch with would love to hear from him, I tried to get him medical attention, but there were many times that I couldn’t, or maybe I just wouldn’t. I felt like it wasn’t a task I could handle, but I’m not sure who I thought would handle it. In the end, was I just another person who gave up on him? There was a suicide note, and someone said that my name was in it. I want to know. I don’t want to know.
Should that have been me? Every year, I think back to January 2002, and I think of what might have been.
We were the same, he and I, except that I had health insurance. I had a best friend who happened to be visiting. I had a sister who dropped everything to come out and figure out what to do next and how to get my parents on board (mental illness is stigmatized in traditional Asian culture, and I credit my sister with teaching my parents that it is an illness to be treated, not a perversity to be ignored). I was a student, and didn’t have to hold down a steady job while I was recovering. I was a girl, and therefore allowed to appear weak. All these things, are they enough to decide who lives and who dies? I don’t know.
RIP, JRS. You were loved and you are missed by many people who wish life had been kinder to you, and that you had been kinder to yourself. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you, or at least convince you that you were worth saving.
Comments (2)
I <3 a lot of what you say here!! I particularly <3 that very last sentence ” I’m sorry I couldn’t save you, or at least convince you that you were worth saving.”
ps. I think it’s easy when your depressed and low on energy to withdraw. And reversly, if you don’t have a lot of contacts (maybe it’s not from depression but just because you get real focused), but for whatever reason, you don’t interact wth many people a day, it’s easy to become depressed and withdrawn. Even introverts gain energy from being around others each day, even if need alone time as well.
I’ve had this resolution this Jan I’ve actually been following that’s helped enourmously towards this. It may seem elementary many. And sometimes entirely easy for me too, but it’s done a world of good towards my positivity and energy over all this last month. It is to contact atleast 3 people a day either through email, text or phone. Some days it’s easy, but other days, when low on energy it’s tougher. Regardless, I always gain energy from doing this – particularly when stretching a lot to do it! I don’t want to end up where your friend was. I know you’ve struggled with depression too.
Thanks for writing this.
Karen
@karen_lynn - That sounds like a good resolution, glad it’s working for you so far. Having a concrete goal that is easy to measure and evaluate seems like a way to set yourself up for well-defined success. I’ve noticed that I do better on resolutions that have a clear way to measure progress (amount of $ to donate, # of books to read, amount of weight to lose) than on resolutions that are too vaguely phrased (be more social, learn my job better).