I am a Functioning Depressive

Eight years ago today, my best friend lost her battle with mental illness. She wrote a note to her family, opened up a boxcutter, and slit her throat. I got a call several days later from her mother - it took that much time for her body to be discovered. Her voicemail light was blinking with the message I’d left her on what turns out to have been the day she died. Just another “Love Bomb”, as we called it - messages we’d leave for each other, just to say I love you and I’m thinking of you. 

For decades, both of us were notorious for screening our calls when we were in our dark places. Our answering machines were our refuge from the world. But long ago, she and I agreed that we would never just hang up on each other - the Love Bomb was our promise to stay in touch, and to wait patiently for the other to come out of whatever funk was visiting that day/week/month. 

I found out in the week that followed her death that this had been her fourth or fifth attempt at suicide. While I knew about the antidepressants, had heard all the gory details about the therapy sessions, and shared all of my darkest thoughts with her, my best friend never told me about those attempts. She held something back, and I don’t suppose I’ll ever truly know why. All I know for sure is that she now has some peace.

Me, not so much. 

My friend’s suicide launched me on a crusade to change the conversation about mental health. I used my professional skills to “give a purpose” to my grief. With my gaze turned outwards, I became passionate about saving lives - attacking the stigma that likely prevented my best friend from sharing with me that one significant detail about her struggle. What I didn’t do until this year is stop, take a breath, and look in the mirror. Until now.

Yes, I feel sadness when I think of all the people I’ve lost. I have always felt everything deeply. Tremendous joy, deep darkness, paralyzing fear, my emotions have always been right there, close to the surface. It's been especially true in the last couple years, as I have entered The Change. But I have over 35 years of practice “putting on a brave face”, thanks to a career in public relations, years of teaching, and a proclivity for rushing in to "take care" of the people I love. I’m not even sure I know how to put my own needs before others, and I certainly don’t know how to take a compliment. I've just come to realize that this outward-looking posture has left me with a huge hole in my Self.

So the true work begins now. As always, I will leverage my intellect to help shepherd me through an emotional journey. But I’m looking for a different outcome this time. It’s personal reconciliation. I want to make peace with this roller-coaster ride I’m on, and embrace the loving, caring, talented woman inside me. I want to come clean about those days when I still wish I had an answering machine to screen me from the world. And I want all of My Self to feel safe to come out to play.