No one really understands
I just finished reading Shauna Grimes article about her difficult life as a child and a young adult and that she doesn’t understand addiction and suicide.
What she really doesn’t understand, IMHO, is severe chronic pain and mental illness.
Let’s start with addiction —
Many times addiction begins with deep internal problems. Chronic pain could be physical or psychological. When someone finds a substance that eradicates that pain or that gives a mental “high,” it’s difficult to give that up. You get then endorphins that you should get from life (love, happiness, family, creativity, exercise…). It’s so much easier just to swallow or inject something.
It’s the same with chronic pain. The relief of that pain leads you to a more normal life. Who would want to give that up, along with those lovely endorphins? Gradually you need more and more and more…
Now, mental illness.
Although I’ve never been an addict (unless you include the Beatles and General Hospital), I do know about having a mental illness. I’ve been diagnosed with Clinical Depression for more than ten years. I remember sitting in a psychiatrist’s office crying like I hadn’t cried in years (not since my fiance died waiting for a heart transplant). There were so many reasons for those tears, too many for a 45 minute session. I went on to almost ten years with a psychologist until we were talking more like friends than patient and therapist and I thought it was time to move on.
Yes, I take an antidepressant. But I still have periods when the grey curtain comes down around me. I have never really thought about ending my life. But I’ve wondered about death and would it be peaceful or would it be nothing. Would it be better than those periods of depression when nothing is good and when I am the most undeserving person in the world? Maybe I’m too much of a coward to exit stage right. Maybe I just want to stick around to bedevil everyone as long as I can. No matter what the reason, I’ve not fallen into the deep, dark abyss.
Even those close to you don’t understand. I’ve always felt that I deserved nothing, from the time I was a child and it’s hard to walk away from those feelings, even after 70 years. My husband just said, “Well, stop thinking that.” If only it was that easy.
I understand both issues — addiction and suicide. I work hard at understanding addiction, especially since a relative I love very much suffered was addicted to heroin. I’m sure his life and mental illness lead to his addiction and I pray he is staying clean. He’s no longer in touch with our family.
And I understand suicide. People who say, “They had everything and seemed to love their family. How could they do it?” don’t understand it.
The abyss call is a siren song. It’s a song that promises the end of pain, pain one cannot explain.
We cannot just say, “I don’t understand” and walk away since it doesn’t affect us. One day one of these problems, from addiction, to mental illness, to suicide, will affect your family. I would hope not but statistics are against that.
We need to understand, to bring these problems out of the shadows — to bring those who suffer out of the shadows. To make deaths by suicide and addiction stand for something — the continued lives of others.
