The River

For me, suicidal depression feels like getting pinned under a boulder in a river. Your chest feels like it’s being crushed, and every breath is a challenge. The longer you struggle the more aches and pains you develop in your arms, legs, and back. Crawfish crawl in your clothes and pinch you, the spring water makes you shiver, and the fear screams through your brain “RUN AWAY!” but, of course, you can’t.

At first, it’s a shock. You struggle to wiggle free, you shout for help, you try to flag people down. Eventually you realize that even though they can see you, they don’t really care. Somehow everyone sees this as not a big deal.

Sometimes people come down to the shore to “check in”. They say things like:

“You can do it”

“Everything will get better”

“You’re getting stronger”

“It will pass”

“It’s not as bad as you think it is”

“It happens to everyone”

Even though you’re bedraggled and exhausted, you know none of what they said makes any sense. It makes you feel more alone. I’m drowning, dying-I don’t need a cheerleader. That does nothing for me to have people telling me positive things while I slip away.

Maybe you start cutting off limbs to try to wiggle free-loved ones, careers, opportunities. Then you feel like an idiot because you’re still trapped, but with one less arm to help get you out.

After days and weeks (months, years) of this it doesn’t become less terrifying, just boring. You grieve for all the things you could be doing, the places you could visit, if you weren’t pinned here under this rock. You forget who you were before the rock. Your identity slowly becomes “person trapped under a rock” and you start to wonder what you’re even fighting for. What happens after the rock? The person who initially slipped down here is gone.

You stop fighting so hard. Many times, you’ll go underwater so long that you’re sure this time you’ll drown. You make peace with it. You find comfort and solace in knowing it’ll soon be over. But then, the water drops unexpectedly, your automatic reflexes force you to take a deep breath, and you have to start all over again. Your body is fighting to survive while your mind just wants it to end.

Maybe a therapist will come down and coach you on how to get yourself free. It might help, it might not. It’s usually better not to fight alone, though.

Maybe a psychiatrist will show up with a bunch of tools to dislodge the boulder. It could work. It could make things worse, pinning you beneath more rocks, or scraping you across the river bed.

The true heroes are the people who come down and tell you jokes, bring you something to eat, or put up a sun umbrella, so at least you don’t have to deal with sunburn. People who can distract you, who don’t pretend they can save you, or that what you’re going through isn’t happening.

Most of us are able to wiggle free. Thousands don’t. Unfortunately, if you’ve been pinned to the river bed once, it’s a high probability you’ll be back down there again.

Those of us with unipolar or bipolar depression don’t just visit the river; we live there. We spend large parts of our lives gazing off into the water, watching the rapids, feeling the desire to jump in and get swept away by all the sadness, loneliness, anger, frustration, guilt, shame, and pain we’re constantly fighting.

So maybe, then, it’s our duty to be the lifeguards. We can recognize people fighting for their lives in a way other people can’t. We can offer empathy, rather than hollow sympathy or condescending pity. We can bring someone a sandwich or a stupid movie and know that those small gestures during the darkest moments are as profound as the grandest gestures during good times.

I find lots of people feel like they can’t do that because “it’s not enough.” Leaving people to twist in the wind, alone, until they are fit to be around “normal” company is not enough. Speaking in hushed tones about “what went wrong” with friends who no longer show up to parties is not enough. Acting like everyone should be strong enough to bootstrap themselves out of a situation as dire as being pinned under a boulder is not enough.

Stress is the scourge of a modern world; loneliness is the plight of a post-modern society. It doesn’t have to be this way. Stress plus loneliness creates the perfect environment for suicide. Together, as a community of peers (clients, patients, doctors, therapists, scientists, and freelance depressives) we need to figure out how to fix this, now. 

What we are doing is simply not enough.