Suicide Post

This was my Facebook post:

The suicide this weekend of PGA TOUR Pro Grayson Murray has been weighing on my mind. It is a perfect example of the overwhelming power of depression.  You can be talented, gifted, successful and loved but that broken place deep inside your brain tells you that you are not.  It whispers to you in the stillness and it shouts to you over the noise of life. It shadows everything around you in a haze of darkness, blocking out the sunlight of reality. 

I am someone who has been on both sides of suicide.  I have suffered its loss in those I have loved as well as been the one lost myself.  Battling depression and SI from a young age I know the constant struggle it is to keep your head above water.  No one wins this battle.  There is no cure, only short-lived periods of remission and that is only for the lucky ones capable of navigating not only uncertain treatments but the financial burden of those hit-or-miss remedies. But, for me, and I am sure so many others out there, there is also a battle you fight with society and finding understanding and compassion from people who have never lived with this terrible disease. 

The stigma is what keeps so many, so silent.  And in the end, that is the killer. It is probably extensively worse for men, who are, by society’s definition, supposed to appear mentally and physically strong.  Depression is viewed as weakness. It is not.  

There are people in my life right now, both men and women, refusing to ask for help, sitting alone in their suffering, afraid to reach out. Depression tells you that you are a burden and society confirms this.  But that is false.  We need to work as a society toward better.  Toward better treatments, better understanding and a culture that both supports and educates.

Suicide is the most preventable of deaths, yet it succeeds in record numbers. It is because as a society we have not yet gathered the collective skills to mitigate it.  For my friends who are suffering with depression and SI I offer you this, there is no way out of the darkness except thru it.  This disease does not offer any easy paths.  Try to find a way to reach out through that darkness for hands to guide you along the way when you cannot muster that for yourself.  They are there even when you cannot see them.  Remind yourself that the voices in your head telling you that you are not loved, not good enough or strong enough, that life is hopeless are only the demons of your mind.

No matter what side of the mental health journey that you sit on, the patient or the loved one, it is in being able to speak freely and honestly, even when you can’t find the words, that will open up the conversations our world needs to unlock the stigma that keeps this disease relegated to the darkness and ushers far too many to their tragic and unnecessary ends.