Tuesday, August 12, 2014

How Does Life Get So Bad That You Kill Robin Williams?

Getty Images taken from http://screencrush.com/good-will-hunting-then-and-now/


I was riding home with a good friend when I got a text that read, "Robin Williams killed himself." "You were the first person I thought of when I found out," many of them said. "You're weirdly calm right now," my friend whom I was with said, "I expect you to freak out any minute."

At 11:30pm I laid down to go to sleep, and I haven't stopped tossing and turning. This wasn't a man I had ever met, and yet he has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I idolized him, the way he made people laugh, his impressions, and as a little girl I used to imitate him to make my friends laugh. Like so many people my age, I grew up with his characters. I grew up memorizing the lines to his movies. His talent for comedy inspired me, and his dramatic roles mesmerized me. I have been able to appreciate his work as both a child and as an adult, and even share my affinity for him with both my father and grandfather.

But you can pick anyone my age to talk to about Robin Williams, and chances are you would hear a similar story. So why was I the first person my friends thought of when they heard the news? Maybe it was because they know that I can't go a day without making a "Mrs. Doubtfire" reference. However, while not quite as advertised as my love for Euviginia Doubtfire, I shared something with the actor: depression. The deep, dense fog that clouds our minds, numbs our senses, and devours our will to stay engaged in life itself. That much we had in common.

Depression is not a feeling, it is a disease. It is an illness. It doesn't care if you are well-off, loved, surrounded by friends and family, successful; in fact, many of us with depression are those things, which makes it nearly impossible to find validation for how we are feeling. It isn't normal to have a good life and still wish that you didn't have to wake up the next morning. And yet, for those of us who have felt the deadening weight of depression, we know too well how that reality is possible.

Depression is not logical, nor is it reasonable. Depression takes wonderful, amazing people, and turns them into bullies, hate mongers, and killers. We bully ourselves, we talk to ourselves worse than we would talk to our enemies, and for some the pain is so great that they resort to killing themselves. One reason that this death has shaken so many people is because we are confronted by the reality of how depression takes over someone's life, someone good, someone funny and beloved. We are equally horrified at the reality of his death and the manner in which it was met. How could this man we all loved take a life? How could he take the life of a beloved, generous, kind man? How did his depression get so great that he had to kill Robin Williams? 

I can't get that thought out of my head. The thought that a man I so loved was struggling so deeply, that he felt killing himself was his only way to end the pain. We all know what it is like to feel pain, some of us greater than others. When we stop and think about how much he was suffering, how can we not break down? 

I am so sorry that you suffered. I am so sorry that no other treatment helped, or showed you a different way to peace. Even as I write this, my Genie doll, still in the box, looks at me with a goofy smile on his face, ready to sing a song, or do a quick Groucho Marx impression. That's who you were to so many. That's who you were to me. You will never stop being an inspiration in my life. 


Disney's Aladdin

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