A year ago today

This blog was started on August 11, 2015, and there was a reason behind that date. It was a year to the day we lost Robin Williams.  A brilliant, talented, crazy, wonderful man with his own set of demons.  I took Robin’s death pretty hard, as a lot of people did.  I am a funny woman.  I am always cracking jokes and making people laugh.  I took a lot of lessons from him.  He was the king of improvisational. I’ve always thought if I had the courage, and grew up somewhere else I could have been a comic.  I was always amazed at how fast his brain worked!  And how smart he was!  He was one of my heroes, warts and all. 

A few days after his death, I was so moved that I sat and wrote, for the first time in a long time, a long and beautiful piece in tribute to his death.  I put the writing away.  A few weeks ago I picked up my pen again and began to write.  Not a freak thing as it is something that I have continued to do, on and off in my life since I was about 12.  More on that later.  I begin to look for the article the other day.  I wanted to type it up and post it as the first article on my blog.  I cannot, as of this writing, find the original tribute I wrote. 

It was beautiful and long and complex and swirling.  The main point of it is this.  I like Robin have suffered on and off with depression and other mental illnesses.  I understood what and why he did it.  With depression, each day we live is a miracle to us.  For those of us with suicidal tendencies, every day we don’t kill ourselves is a victory.  Every day we don’t give in is a gift for those around us, but a lot of times not for us. It’s just one more day stuck in Hell. The constant thought process of we are not good enough, no matter what we do, that we are failures, that we did not do enough is a constant tape that is played in our heads, sometimes despite the medication and years of therapy. 

I may not like what Robin did, but I understand why he did it.  I think finding out he had Parkinson’s was just one more push.  One more thing that put him over the edge.  I think he could just not process it. But I don’t know, we may never know, what or why.  I know I am Robin Williams.  I have been in his shoes.  I have seen the world thru the eyes of mental illness, and sometimes you just get so very, very tired of fighting this often unwinnable fight.  The idea that you are a burden, sometimes because of your disease, and that your family could live a long and happy and healthy life without you in it, is a scenario you play over and over again.  It becomes fact to you, like the Earth is round and the sky Is blue.  When love ones tell you they love you, you often feel they are just deluding themselves and that there is someone out there who is better for them or they wouldn’t love you if they knew what you were thinking or who you really are inside.

I have always been depressed.  I don’t remember a time I was not depressed.  I don’t ever remember a time, except very briefly, that I ever had self confidence and did not loath my own existence.  One of the things that turned me on to Buddhism was a video I watched of His Holiness the Dali Lama.  He was at a conference, I don’t remember where, when a young man got up to speak.  He asked what Buddhism had to say about self hatred.  The Dali Lama looked stunned.  There is then this flurry of activity on stage.  His advisors gather around him and this goes on for a few minutes.  It took me a while to understand they were translating the concept in different languages to him.  They all settle back down and the Dali Lama says, “There is no such concept in Buddhism.  Why would one hate themselves?”  It was a foreign concept to them.  Why indeed?