How to Help Someone With Depression - a guide.

The Cut published How to Help Someone With Depression and it has some helpful, broad guidelines for someone who would like to know what it is that they can offer friends and family who are suffering. 

It's a bad time for me.

Well, fuck me! It's been a rough week.

First, let me share this excerpt from a social media post on Friday evening that'll really help set the tone:

I’ve had a terrible last 48 hours. I’m not feeling that much better, but I thought I’d reach out to those struggling and just say I’m sorry we’re all on this shitty boat together. 

An ongoing sore spot for me is my ability to take care of myself financially. If I let myself focus too intensely on losing an income and my ability to find and keep stable work - I have a panic attack. A bad week at work triggers many things in me. These days though it’s just deep dread and self-loathing. It’s shame and it’s guilt and it’s a weight in my chest. I’m still alive, and I know that’s something, but these days it’s painful. I feel limited and broken and incapable of functioning. I’m not the architect of depression, nothing I feel is original, but I feel so firmly inhabited by it. Usually haunted but these days possessed. 

It is such an awful thing. It’s very nature made to make you feel weak, whiny and spoiled for even naming it. What a luxury to have such a convenient, invisible disease. One that robs you of ambition. One that keeps your decisions safe and your hopes for yourself soft and low. I’m sure it’s the depression, and the exhaustion that marries it that keeps you in a lacklustre suit and not your utter lack of discipline or work ethic. And when you try, and things get bad again you’ll remember why you try and keep your life small. You’ll be reminded by everything in your life. Because everything you love and celebrate on a good day screams your incompetence back at you on a bad one. They’re all things you need to take care of - but can’t. 

Your dog thinks you’re a downer. Your life is too big, you can’t take care of it. This space you occupy is filled with things you now want to sell - to save yourself from becoming the wretch you feel you’re destined to become. 

This is only some of it. Last night was worse. My heart is racing and my mind with it. I am so sick of this invisible disease and I’m furious and uncontrollably discouraged about living where any and all care I could possibly access takes money, leisure time and a tremendous amount of energy. 

I hope pain is a limited resource and when mine is great it’s lessened for somebody else.

Things aren't going well with my new job. Initially, I thought it was friction with my manager that would pass, but it turns out I was incredibly naive about that. My manager's boss met with me this week in a meeting I'm still unclear on. She said they were wondering if they should re-sign my contract when it terminates, or if they should even fulfill my current contract, because of a list of points.

The main point being I had a huge problem with my manager and sick-days. I had 5-day a week medical treatments at a hospital, and it meant going over my allotted sick-day credits. I took some in vacation time, and it just caused a huge problem.

Then there's an appointment I took my mother to, that was in my name, not hers, that I marked as a family day, and should not have. Having apologized for the misunderstanding (my misunderstanding of what constituted a family day) the issue was constantly brought back up as if I was attempting some kind of serious fraud. Which I don't get. My manager was so aggressive and odd about the whole thing when I asked questions because I didn't understand it was like she was trying to trap me in a lie. It was so hostile.

She then went on about second chances and her experiences in the department, and if I had anything to say, but all I did was cry. She told me I could feel safe and tell my side of things but I couldn't. I told her I felt it was more than professional (my manager does not like me) and that I was upset because she was telling me I might lose my job.

There are a lot of examples of my manager not liking me, and why I have the feeling it's personal. I even spoke to someone in HR about it months ago. I've spoken to colleagues about it, and they've noticed it as well. If we all went out to lunch together and came back 15 minutes late, I would be the only one who would get an e-mail about it. Once, while "standing guard" at a door, she saw me on my work cell phone and told me to put my personal cell phone away. I corrected her, and said it was my work phone, and she got irritated and snapped that it didn't look good and started getting mad at me so I stopped trying to talk to her about it, even though my colleague openly admitted to being on his personal phone the entire time, and got no comments from her. It's a ton of little things like that. If the team needed something, there was a time we tested what would happen if I asked versus someone else asking. And, in group meetings, I would often say things that were dismissed, or I was responded to as if I was lying, so one of my colleagues would have to agree with me, and repeat what I was saying or else what I was saying would not be heard.

The main thing that upset me the most was early on when I told her we needed professional movers to move boxes because two of my colleagues were going to burn out, doing physical labor that should not be part of their job. She rejected the comment and was very snide with me, saying it's what we're paid to do. When I went back to my colleagues and told them that, one broke-down. She ended up giving her notice the next week. As a reaction to the near burn-out and notice, my manager hired some part-time movers to help us. But it took someone quitting. When she wrote out to the manager her notice, she never got an actual response, and it was an ongoing issue of not feeling heard for most of us. So I did not trust her from the get-go, which she no doubt must have realized.

I was also reprimanded because there was a day when we were all making boxes and we had no black permanent markers left. I asked to order some, and was met with hostility and suspicion, did we really need them? It might take a while, could we get by without them? We're a team of 4-6 making hundreds of boxes a day - the reaction was nonsensical. So I went to the office supply store and got markers. And I said if I'm reimbursed fine if not, that's okay too. That did not go well.

A lot of the friction has been around me taking liberties I shouldn't be taking anymore now that my employer is the federal government. Apparently, all those bureaucratic jokes about it taking 4-6 weeks before your pencil order comes in isn't a joke. It's something I have a lot of trouble with. Clearly.

During the meeting with my manager's boss I mentioned that when I heard she was leaving I was hoping to benefit from a fresh start with the new manager, who I already prefer. Having said that, the department clearly has a laundry list of issues with me, which isn't something I can easily get over or look past.

She said we'd meet again in a few weeks with my new manager. That didn't leave me feeling great. For now I'm going to just keep going to work and doing the best I can, while also spending as little money as possible since it feels like I'm going to lose my job.

Sure, maybe part of that meeting was to get me to smarten up and move forward, but I felt it was more in line with her doing her due-diligence before firing me to keep the union happy. A union I've never seen or heard from by the way.

If this happened on Thursday, I got home in a panic. I cried the entire bus ride home and most of the night. I have cried more in the last 6 months, at work, than I have in the last decade of my life. I asked a friend if I could text her to "let things out" in order to attempt to decompress a little. I know what happens when you call suicide hotlines. They tell you to call a friend if you can. I guess it's an attempt to get you back in your "real life" with people who actually know you, but what it feels like is a dodge. It all feels like a dodge.

I went to work Friday, kept busy with the job, and came home Friday night quite well rooted in a mix of situational sadness and deep depression.

1. I am not capable of having a decent job because I'm a piece of shit.
2. I am unable to take care of myself.
3. I am 34 and dependent on my mother.
4. If my mother passes before me, I'm fucked.
5. I shouldn't have adopted my dog, I'm a fuck-up. 
6. I don't deserve a job with actual reasonable working conditions.
7. I have an undeserved ego/pride.
8. I am incapable of holding down a job.
9. I need to get "worse" jobs that I deserve.
10. I will never be able to afford care (therapy, classes, yoga, self-care). 
11. My inability to understand the complexities of all the interactions with my manager over the last few months clearly shows I have a diminishing mental capacity. 
12. I am a drain on my mother.
13. I am a drain on my friends and family.
14. I am a disappointment to my friends and family.
15. This was my one chance to get into the public sector and I fucked it up. 
16. I would need to live in affordable housing, but my mental illness is borderline severe so I will never be helped by any official social services.
17. Any care I could access would have to be paid out of pocket, which I will never be able to afford, so I will never access it. 
18. All of this was avoidable, but I was too nonchalant because I'm dissociative. 

It goes on and on.

At this point, 2-3 days after the shock of it all I'm calmer, so maybe this makes a little more sense than the sheer panic of Thursday and Friday. It's quieter now.

Yesterday I went to the dog park, ran some simple errands and watched documentaries all day. I watched I Am Not Your Negro and I Am Another You, which hit close to home since it was about being homeless due (in large part) to mental illness. Great timing on that one.

Today I went to the dog park, did some laundry and might watch another movie or cook something.

Sometimes I fall into this crevasse of thinking about losing my job and my heart starts to race.

Other times a feeling of uselessness just slowly covers me up.

It's not a great time. It's not a good time. It's a bad time for me.

Chris Cornell.

Woke up to the news today that Chris Cornell died at the age of 52.

Hours later, it's now come to light that he committed suicide by hanging himself in a hotel room.

When someone dies by suicide, I always get a chill of recognition. As if we're known to one another, not through life, but through the method of death.

I'm sorry Chris. It's over.

Chris Gethard: Career Suicide.

The links seem to only link to the American version of HBO - so I don't know if this will be available in Canada. Womp womp.

Can psychedelic drugs work magic on depression?

CBC Radio has a piece up right now on using psychedelic drugs in the treatment of depression. 

Some excerpts:

The pharmaceutical industry has developed the preparation of ketamine called esketamine which, instead of having to inject intravenously, can be inhaled under medical surveillance, of course. 

And there are at least three trials ongoing in different countries, in different centres. We are one of the centers and if everything goes well we're talking probably about commercialization in late 2019.

 ...

It could have a major impact because, for example, it could be given to people who have had treatment resistance. And then we would have the capacity to get them well very fast. And then more research will have to be carried out to see if it could be used earlier in the sequence of treatment. And like I mentioned before almost everybody experiences a decrease in suicidal ideation. And that's the major impact because there are 4,000 Canadians dying from suicide in Canada every year, 11 a day.

Check out the aricle, or the radio episode.

I'm willing to try anything to feel better - I don't care of it's horse tranquilizer.

David Foster Wallace and depression.

From a piece on David Foster Wallace and his depression:

All of this is to say that sadness doesn’t possess the real teeth of depression. The symptom that distinguishes depression from any other state is something I would call terminal fragility, although it’s defined in a less hand-wavey way by the DSM as “guilt/worthlessness.” It’s the feeling that the world’s fundamental malignancy begins with oneself. It represents a categorical change in the way you perceive negative outcomes. You see pain as appropriate punishment, instead of occasional inconvenience. You see yourself as a burden—a net loss for humanity—somehow less worthy of life. Instead of thinking, “that shitty day happened to me,” you think, “as is consistent with my deservedly shitty life, that shitty day occurred, the pain of which is unmitigated by its predictability.” The normal thought, if your hair is misbehaving, is, “fuck, I’ve gotta buy a blow dryer.” The depressed thought is, “I am feeling paralyzing woe because my hair, finally, is as ugly as my soul.” That’s depression’s foremost distinction—it holds you responsible for your suffering.

The original article, The David Foster Wallace Disease by Sasha Chapin is over on Hazlitt.

Wallace’s story “The Depressed Person” opens like this:

“The depressed person was in terrible and unceasing emotional pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a component of the pain and a contributing factor in its essential horror.”

I've never read Wallace. It sounds too intense for me. Intellectually and in scope. I don't know that I have the stamina or attention span for it. I also don't know that reading such well-developed writing on and around depression would be good for me. I'm already convinced, brother.

Take care of yourself Kid Cudi.

Kid Cudi just posted about going to rehab for treatment, dealing with depression and suicidal ideation.

This is his post:

Its been difficult for me to find the words to what Im about to share with you because I feel ashamed. Ashamed to be a leader and hero to so many while admitting I've been living a lie. It took me a while to get to this place of commitment, but it is something I have to do for myself, my family, my best friend/daughter and all of you, my fans.
Yesterday I checked myself into rehab for depression and suicidal urges. 

I am not at peace. I haven't been since you've known me. If I didn't come here, I wouldve done something to myself. I simply am a damaged human swimming in a pool of emotions everyday of my life. Theres a ragin violent storm inside of my heart at all times. Idk what peace feels like. Idk how to relax. My anxiety and depression have ruled my life for as long as I can remember and I never leave the house because of it. I cant make new friends because of it. I dont trust anyone because of it and Im tired of being held back in my life. I deserve to have peace. I deserve to be happy and smiling. Why not me? I guess I give so much of myself to others I forgot that I need to show myself some love too. I think I never really knew how. Im scared, im sad, I feel like I let a lot of people down and again, Im sorry. Its time I fix me. Im nervous but ima get through this. 

I wont be around to promote much, but the good folks at Republic and my manager Dennis will inform you about upcoming releases. The music videos, album release date etc. The album is still on the way. Promise. I wanted to square away all the business before I got here so I could focus on my recovery.

If all goes well ill be out in time for Complexcon and ill be lookin forward to seeing you all there for high fives and hugs. 

Love and light to everyone who has love for me and I am sorry if I let anyone down. I really am sorry. Ill be back, stronger, better. Reborn. I feel like shit, I feel so ashamed. Im sorry. 

I love you,
Scott Mescudi

You can read it on his facebook.

The Atlantic has a piece up on masculinity, race and depression.

I just wish him love and support. It's rough, I know how he feels, and words are never enough. I wish him a warm blanket and a deep hug. Hot tea and a cuddle. A soft bed and clean sheets. Sun on his face. A hearty laugh. A friendly dog. Those little things help for me, I hope his little things help for him. Small comforts.

My chest aches in recognition.

Those left behind by suicide.

During a series on PTSD, The Establishment printed a piece called The Secret World of Suicide Survivors by Cindy Lamothe. Cindy's sibling committed suicide, and she discusses the loss, the PTSD and trauma:

One of the core tenets of trauma is the self-protective impulse it instils in us to fight or flight. The mind starts to shut systems down, causing us to lose contact with important functions such as the ability to plan, to reason or think, even to formulate words.

This is how I lose a decade of my life. Through an absolute shut down.The brain adapts ridiculously complex ways to protect you from what you're feeling. As does the ego. Maybe even the id. We will fall down a rabbit hole to avoid what we're feeling.

Lamothe also features other writers who have survived the suicides of loved ones.

This wasn't what I was expecting from that article. I expected the stories of those who tried to take their own lives, failed / were saved, and then continued to live their lives. 

Of course, it seems evident that those close to a suicide would see themselves as a survivor.n They're (in this case) someone living with  PTSD of the trauma of that death. In my own life, my brother's best friend's little brother committed suicide very violently, and it shook my brother terribly. His best friend, A, is someone I grew up with, and he also lives with mental illness, so no doubt he lives with the repercussions of that suicide daily. I can understand seeing all of those affected as survivors, but I don't entirely see it. Not clearly. 

Suicide is self-inflected. That doesn't mean it doesn't affect others. That there isn't a ripple. I tend to lean towards those with the suicidal ideation. I just see suicide through a graph. A peak of pain. The apex of suffering when it's seen as the only solution / reprieve. 

It's terribly sad. There's something so sickening about the living ending their own life. Does that exist anywhere else in nature? Animals can lay down and die, maybe sacrifice themselves, but willingly manipulating their bodies in a way as to cause harm to the point of death, is that possible? 

There are types of passive suicide, but active suicide of a violent nature, is so loudly traumatic. 

The times in my life I was suicidal, I couldn't imagine traumatising my mother to that degree. I could bear the pain, for her. Had I lost her too during that time, I don't know if I'd still be here.

So I have mixed feelings. I can see that someone close to you dying by suicide would be deeply traumatic. I can see the trauma and grief of that causing PTSD. I wouldn't necessarily say that they're the survivor though. They're the survivor of their grief, the survivor of PTSD, but I wouldn't go so far as to say they're the survivor of suicide - suicide is self-inflicted. And if I commit suicide there is only one victim intended. 

On Virginia Woolf.

I've been reading Virginia Woolf's Moments of Being, and it's been moving. Well, parts of it have. There are long segments that list names of lords and ladies, parties and calling cards. I resolve those dry sections to be equivalent to me telling anybody about my day, it would be tedious. Our days are filled with people and happenings of no real value outside of propelling our story forward. It seems only the peaks and valleys really make their mark. So I am drawn to Virginia most when she is lost in thought.

I've not read the interpretations of her, the forewords and notes, I want only to read what's written by her hand. I've been working my way through her work, and I've been increasingly drawn to her voice.

She describes concepts in a way that speaks directly to me.

She mentions "ancestral dread," (68) how she feels she's inherited the puritanical from her ancestors. She also briefly mentions what sounds like a sexual molestation, and the shame she feels in recognising her beauty, or even looking at herself. She's quick to move away from this, and focuses instead on her feelings of always having been older than herself.

During difficult times, I've often felt my depression was deserved. Inherited. That maybe it was a past life, manifest. Maybe I was fucking awful once. Maybe my people were. I'm white - that's likely historically accurate. Maybe I inherited this pain from someone. Maybe it's my birthright. This ancestral dread, is another way to externalise the depression, to name it. It's a demon. A curse. An ancestral dread.

She also names how much of our time is spent in a state of  "non-being" (70).  These, the parts of our day we don't really recall due to monotony and habit. These moments we move from one place to another, as automatons. "Every day includes much more non-being than being," she says, from over 70 years ago. Now we experience that non-being with a screen in our face. But it's easier than that. It takes so much energy to focus. It takes so much to be alert, to be active. It comes in bursts. Now like then.

She describes her depression as only a writer can:

"But it was not over, for that night in the bath the dumb horror came over me. Again I had that hopeless sadness; the collapse I have described before; as if I were passive under some sledge-hammer blow; exposed to a whole avalanche pf meaning that had heaped itself up and discharged itself upon me, unprotected, with nothing to ward it off, so that I huddled up at my end of the bath, motionless." (78)

 "The dumb horror" is indeed what it is. No doubt her use of the word "dumb" is meant in a dumbing sense, meaning temporarily unable to speak or communicate. And that would be an apt description. Both work, really. There's a cutting into you that disables the parts of you that communicate, that reach out. There's also a return to more rudimentary processing, more immediate and needs-based. I liken it to being sleep-deprived. There's a real pull you can't just "snap out of," no matter how hard you fight it.

Overall the read got long at times, Woolf goes over the social nature of 20th century England in a way that's exhausting to even imagine. Did these people have jobs? They're mainly aristocrats, so no, they didn't.

Woolf is best when she floats above the world, not when she's bogged down by social-decorum and the daily "non-being."

Assisted suicide and mental illness.

I've thought about suicide before. More precisely, assisted suicide. There are times when I've been in such pain, it seemed a kindness to myself. But, I don't want to hurt myself. I don't want my mother finding me. I don't want to horrify those I love.

So, a few articles around assisted suicide and the mentally ill have crossed my path, and I've finally had the time to read them. First, Assisted Death: Decision Extremely Complex For Those With Mental Illness - over on Huffington Post.

Last week, a parliamentary committee recommended that Canadians with psychiatric disorders that cause intolerable suffering should be included in any regulations governing physician-assisted death, which becomes legal June 6 under the Supreme Court of Canada's landmark ruling a year ago.

I actually reached out to the doctor quoted in the above article. The parliamentary committee is touching on legislation that directly affects me and people like me. I'm not saying I plan on applying for assisted suicide, but I would like the option. I also would be a great example of the type of person who could talk their way into an approval. There are points and counter-points to all of it, and it should all be discussed.

There's also this post over on Broadly, This Man Wants Doctors To Euthanize Him Because He Can’t Accept His Sexuality, which first, says a lot about homophobia and shame, but also talks about how in Belgium the laws around assisted suicide include mental illness.

A Stolkhom lawyer:

"It's possible to have euthanasia for recognized psychiatric disorders that cause you unbearable pain and hopeless suffering."

I ask how a mental illness resulting from an inability to accept being gay might fit within the law. "Events in your life—such as the death of a loved one—can cause you to develop depressive disorders. In the same way, the difficulty of coming to terms with your sexuality can cause someone to be depressed. 

"That's potentially what fits within the context of mental disorder in this case."

To be clear, the assisted suicide here is because of his depression and anxiety. Due, seemingly majorly, to his being in a lot of pain regarding his being gay (and no doubt other underlying issues). As said by the article:

The case serves as a depressing reminder that the discrimination experienced by some LGBQT people in their formative years can have a hugely scarring and lifelong effect. "Unfortunately we still live in a world where hate and discrimination directed toward lesbian, gay, bi and trans people can lead to many of them feeling distressed, alone and even suicidal," says a spokesperson for Stonewall, an LGBT charity. "We still have so much left to do until all LGBT people are accepted without exception."

This is timely. Days after a possibly-closeted man murdered 49 LGBTQ/Latinx club patrons, and injured 53, there's a lot to discuss regarding homophobia, being closeted, self-hatred and toxic-masculinity. It all intersects. It all compacts. It all kills.

The suicide memoir.

Over on Lit Hub, from The Suicide Memoir: True Crime, Mystery and Grief, Al Alvarez quoted discussing Sylvia Plath's suicide:

“It was an act she felt she had a right to as a grown woman and a free agent.”
Oooof. First, when I write "ooof" imagine someone being punched in the stomach.It's the sound someone makes blowing out air after being sucker-punched in the gut.

Many things can bring you to suicide. Desperation. Pain. Fear. But ultimately we should all have an unquestioned right to our own bodies, so yes, suicide is a right. 

Reasons to stay alive.

Just read Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig.

Overall I thought the book was a "meh." It lost me on a lot of sections, and overall I just wasn't impressed by it. It did, however have some sections I highlighted for further inquiry or just to excerpt here.

Page 18:

Now, listen. If you have ever believed a depressive wants to be happy, you are wrong. They could not care less about the luxury of happiness. They just want to feel an absence of pain.

I think that's a fair statement. For me, suicide, or death, or just a loss of consciousness just sounds peaceful and nice sometimes.

Page 104:

The thing I hadn't realized, before I became mentally ill, is the physical aspect of it. I mean, even the stuff that happens inside your head is all sensation. My brain tingles, whirred, fluttered and pumped. Much of this action seemed to happen near the rear of my skull, in m occipital lobe, though there was also some fuzzy, TV-static, white-noise feelings going on in my frontal love. 

Well, this is me these days. Zapping, whirring sounds, frontal lobe throbs. Feeling like these's a white-noise swarm in between my ears. These are real symptoms, and Haig mirrors my experience here.

Page 125:

The main thins is the intensity of it. It does not fit within the normal spectrum of emotions. When you are in it, you are really in it. You can't step outside it without stepping outside of live, because it is life. It is your life. Every single thing you experience is filtered though it.
...
Depression for me, wasn't a dulling but a sharpening, an intensifying, as though I had been living my life in a shell and now the shell wasn't there. It was total exposure.

I feel that. Like an open, raw nerve. Like I hear everything. Like it's all too much.

Page 131:

If you are the type of person who thinks too much about stuff then there is nothing lonelier in the world then being surrounded by a load of people on a different wavelength.

Preach.

He also quotes Keats, "Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?" And you know I'd be lying if I said this never crossed my mind, but there are those who do not struggle this way, and who do not have a relationship to pain the way I do, and they have souls, do they not? I understand Keats' wanting to romanticize the pain, since it's his job, but sometimes romanticizing pain does us, those who live it, a disservice.

And then he quotes Vonnegut, "Reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found." And this is something I am exercising now. It is an attempt at exorcism through an art. Through a practice.

Overall the read was short. I thought Haig clearly had an anti-medication sentiment. And though he claimed to not judge those who needed it, he was always quick with a "but" which negated whatever non-judgmental statement he had just made. He also had these weird fake conversations between past him and present him. I thought they were simplistic and infantile. I also did not like his using twitter-based interaction as page filler. It just seemed amateurish. And I'm the amateur. Writing to the void.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend the book really. Unless you're drawn to "lighter" books about mental illness. I'm not.

I told the truth in my sister’s obituary, so that others might choose to live.

The Washington Post has a great piece up. Entitled I told the truth in my sister’s obituary, so that others might choose to live, the piece is written by a woman whose sister died by suicide due to her struggle with depression. The author, Eleni Pinnow chose to write and speak honestly about the death of her sister in the obituary she wrote for her.

The obituary, brought me to tears. Reading the obituary also moved someone over at the Washington Post, since they decided to contact Pinnow directly.

Read all of it. Read Pinnow's article, then the obituary.

Many feels.

Her call to arms at the end of her piece reinforces by desire to be open and honest about my struggles.

The article then linked me to this, An open letter to the Whole Foods shoppers who consoled me when I learned of my dad’s suicide which also made me cry. It's a testament to kindness and care, and my heart is just exploding right now.

Many, many feels.

The suicide note as literary genre.

Lit Hub has a piece up, The Suicide Note as Literary Genre. The author only focuses on literary heavyweights, like Virginia Woolf, whose note, like all of her writing is morose and distantly powerful:

Everything has gone for me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. 

There's no real discussion of suicide as an act of desperation and pain, it's framed through the value of literary voices and of their written legacy. What Woolf is saying is not unlike any other "normal" suicide note, she's saying her partner is too good for her, and that she feels she's ruining their life, and that she was indeed happy with them, but that it needs to end for her now. She can't anymore.

He author ends his piece saying:

It is little wonder, then, that there are those of us who read and return to the literature of suicide with interest, and always with a sense of gratitude, an awareness of embattled courage. No matter how often I read them, it still seems an incredible thing to have laid words upon a void, to have given raiment even to expiration.

Raiment, or dressing that "expiration" in language only romanticizes it. A painter can represent a harrowing, isolate landscape and it can be truly beautiful to look at and ponder, but to live there is a horror. And in some art, there is an amount of exploitation. A photographer takes a picture of a war zone, of an absolute horror scene that someone is living through, and that piece of work will represent that horror for better or for worse. That photographer cannot claim responsibility for the way in which that photograph is interpreted. They can, however claim their intent. In the case of this piece on suicide notes as literature, the author does have a very romantic view of these pieces as literature first, and as a pained expression second.

That's not to say that there is no literary value to suicide notes, there can be. But for me, the context within which they were created cannot be extruded from the resulting literary output.

Having "given raiment even to expiration" is a pretty turn of phrase for something more plainly expressed by saying the writers of these suicide notes used their art, and their main communication tool - writing - to express their despair and attempt to explain their actions to those left behind.

I don't know, the piece bugs me. I think it's fucked up to overly enjoy this kind of writing, especially from a non-depression based reading. If you're mentally ill, reading a suicide note can evoke a lot of feelings in you, and it can be helpful in describing your own pain or experience if language isn't your forte. It's also speaking at a pitch that I recognize.

Overly "fetishizing" this writing is fucked up and seems disrespectful to me. The author is quick to point out that criticism and then dismiss it, but it's valid. These are intimate pieces written for specific people, mind your business. He writes about it with glee. It bugs me.

Suicide and insurance coverage.

Amidst all the Oscar talk on the radio this morning (Gaga should have won for best song), CBC News mentioned a possible change coming to the insurance coverage and legitimacy perception of suicide.

They had this piece from 2015, Suicide attempts and insurance: Why you might not be covered.

In a more recent piece, Insurance companies reconsider 'dated' policies for suicide attempts, the faulty logic of "avoidable" injury is called out.

The article quotes Mark Warder, a man whose America hospital bill was not covered due to the insurance companies policy that rejects suicide, and instead focuses only on depression to a certain point. After going public he very aptly stated:

Let's face it, most people if they've gone through this and [the insurance claim] gets turned down, they don't have the motivation to fight it.

 Preach. The piece goes on to quote Bill Wilkerson, a former insurance insider:

It's one of those hangovers from an ancient time of stigmatizing mental illness and viewing the destruction of someone under those circumstances as either a crime or a sin when it is neither.

The act of "committing suicide" was a crime in Canada until 1972.

There is a lot of work to be done in terms of insurance and access. I worry that this news coverage will go away and insurance companies will be quick to sweep it under the rug.

I plan on printing out the article and mailing it to my insurer and the HR deparment where I work.

Short: Living with Depression.

Well done. The fact that the video ends with self-promotion bugs me though.

Lady GaGa and the Emotion Revolution.

A little after the 8-minute mark Gaga talks about her struggles with anxiety and depression, and her being medicated. She has been unable to wean off of her meds (sounds familiar to me, and is an issue for many of us).

She also lists all the things she's tried (acupuncture, cupping, meditation).

It's an interesting conversation overall as well, the new research and conversations revolving around emotional and emotional intelligence is not inly interesting but encouraging.

Please Like Me.

Look, I love Please Like Me. It's an Australian narrative/comedy written by and starring Josh Thomas, and it's brilliant.

It's quick, cleaver, sweet and occasionally absurd and dark as fuck. It's my life. The fact that much of the show also deals with mental illness in a super open way is just the icing on top of a delicious television cake.

I just relate to it so much. Sometimes really dark things happen, and then sometimes you dress up your dog and make a music video.

This exchange takes place in a psychiatric hospital:

I love the humour, I love the credits and the visuals. I just love it. I love it I love it I love it.

The first two seasons just played on CBC here in Canada, and seem to be playing on ABC in the US.

I don't know much about Josh, he hasn't done a ton of press here. It goes without saying (as I say it) that I want to be friends with him. He seems great.

I know the show has been compared to Louis and Girls, which I think is fair, though Please Like Me is sweeter and funnier, but there is an often darker/grittier undertone, just subtler. Louis and Girls can have very dark episodes, but Please Like Me can talk about something pretty serious or dark through a lens that's still pretty ambivalent and sarcastic. 

I can't recommend it enough. It's currently streaming on the CBC website, and I think you can get it online in the US and in Australia. Check it out.

A lot of the above gifs are from the Please Like Me official Tumblr.

Suicide is not selfish.

I was introduced to Feminista Jones through a podcast I listened to featuring her. She's a sex-positive, intersectional feminist and black rights activist, who works in community activism and social support systems.

In her interview she talks about mental health and suicide, and mentions a past article of hers I'd like to link to, and talk about here. Jones mentions a colleague who recently died by suicide, and how disappointed she was to see the online community victim-blame and refer to her suicide as "selfish."

Jones discusses the issue from the perspective of a black woman, and describes the ways in which the culture of being a black woman in America is extremely loaded:

... for Black women, experiences with depression and trauma are often directly related to our being women and being Black and carrying the weight of this duality in a society that “others” both identities. Factor in religious expectations that require "more faith," intraracial expectations of loyalty and secrecy (when experiencing abuse), and the persistent disconnect between Black people and mental health care, there are so many things to consider when a Black woman takes her own life.

Intersectionality is an important part of not only a feminist analysis of the world, but of a considered, logical one. Context exists. It matters. There have been numerous articles and media coverage of PTSD and the black experience over the last few months, especially in relation to state-violence and gun violence. What about gender and sexual violence? What about being a black woman, who experiences both of these things but might also live with a disability, or face homophobia? Everything matters.

Personally, I have a lot of difficulty reading pieces about suicide that are written by people outside of the mental illness community. I don't think suicide is selfish. I think it's a painful result of a really painful time. It's seen as the only out. It's the only solace. I get that. It's turning it all off. Lights out. Peace.

Feminist Jones describes this well, here she's comparing losing someone to suicide as opposed to cancer:

There is something different about a person committing suicide, though, which elicits a different, almost angry feeling of betrayal. Many people think it is selfish to end your life when so many people love you, rely on you, need and want you around, and can’t imagine their lives without you. The angry feelings are often centred on what people need from you… for themselves. Some people make your life, your whole being, and your entire purpose more about what works to make their own lives better. People are concerned more about what they can no longer take from you and less about whether or not you were living your life happily for yourself. When someone takes his/her own life, that person is posthumously blamed for causing so many other people pain with little recognition or empathy for the pain that likely led to the suicide itself.

She goes on to refer to it as an act of "freedom and mercy" for the self, and is critical of how unsympathetic some are when discussing someone dying by suicide.

No one has the right to determine what another person should endure. We don’t get to tell other people that “it will be OK” and they “need to have more faith”. We have no right to tell someone that their pain isn’t as bad as others, thus negating their experiences and isolating them further away from actually getting help that might make things better. We don’t get to make other people’s lives about US and demand that people live for us and our wants and needs. We have no permission to dictate the choices of others and expect that their choices consider our feelings before their own. That is the epitome of selfishness and we need to end that way of thinking.

She ends her peace in a devastatingly poignant statement:

I’ll leave you with this: When I hear “Suicide is selfish,” I think of every Black woman held in bondage, whose body was ravaged daily, whose womb was exploited for profit, whose children were stolen, whose back was lashed for not meeting the requirements of her owner, who was sterilized, and whose mind was irreparably destroyed after years of torture who took the only path of freedom for which her earthly body could not be further punished.

 I can't speak to the black experience. I can only speak to my own variations of pain.

And pain, kills. And wanting to escape that pain, should not be faulted. Especially when the services and the accommodations offered to us to help live with that pain are lacking and in most cases, all-together non-existent.

If you want me to live, help me.

If you can't help me, let me die.

If you can't let me die, try and empathise with why I would want to.

It all brings me back to a quote from Martha Manning's Undercurrents:

I didn't want to die because I hated myself; I wanted to die because I loved myself enough to want this pain to end.

I know that must be really dark and unimaginable for a healthy person to understand, but at least try.

Live through this.

Live Through This is "a collection of portraits and stories of suicide attempt survivors, as told by those survivors."

Check it out.