Most of the time, I don't think about my nervous breakdown in 2004. I don't remember too much about how miserable I felt. How sad, how hopeless I felt. How empty and alone. And I never once thought about killing myself. But I can imagine why someone who felt as I have felt might think of it.
My mother called me this morning and told me that her hairdresser shot himself. At one time he did my hair too.
He left behind a wife and two teenage sons.
My first thought was, "How could he think that suicide was a good idea?"
And my second thought was to remember just how irrational my thinking was in the midst of my nervous breakdown. Everything was desperate. Nothing was ever going to work right again. Catastrophes were everywhere around me. I didn't know if I would ever not be sad or scared again.
My rational mind was taking an ass-kicking from my irrational, depressed, anxious mind.
I remember meeting some friends for lunch during the worst of my breakdown, and it was all I could do to not break down. It was all so bleak. I was so not the Carrie they knew. I was a shadow of myself, a shell with nothing inside but sorrow.
So my heart really breaks for this man who was eaten alive by his irrational thoughts, and for his family who lost this man twice. Once when the depression stole his mind and then when it stole his entire existence.
My mother called me this morning and told me that her hairdresser shot himself. At one time he did my hair too.
He left behind a wife and two teenage sons.
My first thought was, "How could he think that suicide was a good idea?"
And my second thought was to remember just how irrational my thinking was in the midst of my nervous breakdown. Everything was desperate. Nothing was ever going to work right again. Catastrophes were everywhere around me. I didn't know if I would ever not be sad or scared again.
My rational mind was taking an ass-kicking from my irrational, depressed, anxious mind.
I remember meeting some friends for lunch during the worst of my breakdown, and it was all I could do to not break down. It was all so bleak. I was so not the Carrie they knew. I was a shadow of myself, a shell with nothing inside but sorrow.
So my heart really breaks for this man who was eaten alive by his irrational thoughts, and for his family who lost this man twice. Once when the depression stole his mind and then when it stole his entire existence.
1 comment:
As depressed as I was during my worst years (and I don't think it was anything near what you experienced after N was born), I never seriously considered suicide. But I can imagine the incredibly deep hole a person must feel like he/she is in to feel like taking your life is the only way out.
And you're right, it's a matter of losing one's ability to think rationally. I think about this from time to time in reference to Dion's brother, who has been hearing multiple voices in his head for nearly thirty years as a result of schizophrenia. Much of the time he doesn't know what Truth is, or Reality is, because the voices are telling him something different than what his senses -- and what's available of his rational mind -- are telling him. I cannot fathom what kind of hell on earth that would be like, but I can imagine it leading to the act of committing suicide.
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