Thoughts on Depression and the Death of Robin Williams

You came to visit me today.

You sat next to me in Science class, somewhere between kingdom and phylum. Nobody else saw you come in, of course, because you're sneaky. You looked like the boy in the flannel shirt and Reeboks, but I knew it was you.

We're not supposed to talk in class, but you did it anyway. I heard you whispering about the blinds being closed so no light could come in, and how it would always be that dark. But that classroom was always dark, and I couldn't remember when it wasn't.

Suddenly, you were sitting on my chest. I didn't see you move, but I felt you pressing into me, felt the weight bearing down. You told me that eleven or twelve years was enough, that the rest would all be the same, that there would never be anything new or different. Or better.

You were inside my head. I couldn't breathe.

That was the first time that I saw the appeal of the neck-length tape measure wrapped around a hook in the cubby.

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Earlier this week, our collective hearts were broken and our spirits devastated when beloved comedian/actor Robin Williams passed away. He took his own life at the age of 63, and after hearing the nature of his death, I have started to remember my own experiences with depression and suicidal thoughts, which started when I was in elementary school.

It's not something I have occasion to speak about very often, nor that I particularly like speaking about. The memories, what few of them remain, are too painful to revisit. I've attempted to describe it via the passage above, but the difficult part to reconcile is that this didn't happen just once; it happened over and over and over again, in different settings and to varying degrees all through my school career.

When you are young, you don't fully understand the finality and permanence of death. As the thought of suicide grew in my mind, what I believed was that killing myself meant killing someone that everyone hated, and that if I eradicated that part of me, I would return, somehow, as someone that everyone loved.

To this day, I am still not sure what kept me from doing it. Speaking in practical terms, I couldn't overdose because I wasn't able to swallow pills at the time; I was afraid of blood and sharp things, so that ruled out a slightly more violent end; and I didn't have the necessary fine motor coordination skills to make a noose. It reads like a comedy of errors, but I feel that these obstacles were put in place almost by design. I remember thinking of each of these things as one failure after another on my part. I felt that I was a failure at life...and then I was a failure at death, too.

That was what depression told me.

What it didn't tell me was that I wasn't alone. That there were and are so many others, like Robin Williams, who suffer quietly, wanting and hoping for things to be different, but who feel trapped, isolated, and lost in their despair.

Though I did begin taking Prozac for the depression at age 12 (and voluntarily stopped when I was 15), the cloud only began to lift after I left high school, when--for the first time that I could really remember--people saw me. They saw that I was here, that I existed, and that maybe I was even a good person. Their voices became louder than depression's voice, and at long last, I could breathe again.

I know that I got very lucky.

My story is only one story, and depression affects other people in all sorts of different ways. We have a very long way to go yet when it comes to discussing mental illness and suicide, and the stigma that surrounds these issues will never go away unless we start talking about them.

If nothing else, I hope the death of Robin Williams will be the beginning of this desperately-needed change.

I only wish he could be around to see how it ends.

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[If you are having imminent thoughts of suicide, please consider calling the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273-8255 (in the U.S.), or visit their website.]

I still remember the first time I realized that a guy thought I was cute.

Then I thought maybe it was a joke, or he was on drugs.

It happened back when I was in college. My self-esteem was incredibly low then...or, more nonexistent, because it had been so slowly chipped away throughout middle and high school. And when you’re told you are ugly every day, or made to feel it, for years on end, you just start believing it. I had no reason to think differently.

So it wasn’t only the idea that someone found me attractive that blew my mind, but that I could be something other than ugly. I had believed it was just a simple, permanent fact that that’s what I was, and there was no changing it. And then someone was defying that, going against everything I’d heard for so long, and showing me another option.

The problem there, though, was that the belief that I was not ugly didn’t exist because I believed it, but because someone else did. So once again, my self image and view of myself came from other people, albeit in a different way. It’s only really been in about the last five years that I have grown confident about my appearance, on my own, without validation or approval from others.

The thing that I realized is that whether you hate your body or love your body, if either one of those things is fueled by what other people are telling you, then it’s not coming from you—it’s coming from them, and they still have the power. I didn’t want that. I wanted to be the one with that power, the one in control of my feelings about myself, because I spent so much of my life powerless and feeling like I had control over nothing.

So it feels good to be able to look into the mirror these days and think, “You know what? I am pretty darn cute.” Cause now, even if no one else thinks so, I don’t need the reminders. Because I am the reminder.

The Ghosts of Thanksgiving Past

They say that everyone has some kind of horror story related to Thanksgiving—missed flights, dysfunctional families, burned turkeys, and so many other flavors of chaos that rear their unwelcome head whenever this particular holiday comes around.

My own history with Thanksgiving is not nearly as sensational, but when this day rolls around each year, I always take a moment to pause and reflect.

When I was a kid, I used to get sick on Thanksgiving, every single year. I can’t remember exactly when it started, but I’ll guess and say I had to be about 12 years old. My great-aunt Florence had Thanksgiving at her house in those days, and for almost the entire duration, I would be sequestered in the guest room bed, wageel (metal bowl) beside me, trying to shut out the fragrant aromas wafting from the kitchen as I vomited into the bowl, over and over.

Being the gourmand that I am now, it seems almost cruel that I was shut out of these dinners, and indeed, I have no memory of ever eating anything at Thanksgiving for many years, simply because I could not keep anything down. The repetition of this event was bizarre, and baffled both me and my parents, as there seemed to be no reasonable explanation for the cause of it.

…And then it stopped. The Thanksgiving after I graduated high school, I didn’t get sick. At all. Nor have I gotten sick on Thanksgiving since.

For the longest time, I’ve wondered why or how this could have happened. All those years of getting sick like clockwork, and suddenly it ended, with no warning. Well, realization does not always dawn; sometimes, it thwacks, and that’s how it was when I figured out the reason why.

I think that my social skills problems and the teasing/tormenting that I endured in junior high/high school were so bad that, by the time Thanksgiving rolled around each year, my body responded to it by just completely shutting down. Then I went off to college, and the teasing went away…and the sickness went along with it.

So, with all of that behind me, I was finally able to build a new image of Thanksgiving, which included enjoying the fabulous feast that, well, is pretty much the sole purpose of the holiday. But the shape of Thanksgiving was radically altered yet again, when my grandpa passed away on Thanksgiving Day in 2003.

It was my junior year of college. My grandpa had been sick for some time, and my dad and his siblings had put him in an assisted living facility. He was a diabetic, and he was slowly starting to lose his vision, and even as I grieved his loss, I knew that would have been an intolerable state for him to be in.

I remember my great-aunt Lollie (Grandpa’s sister-in-law) walking into the kitchen in her white Florida sweatshirt, her voice breaking into tears, and my Aunt Nancy right behind her, also crying. I’d never seen my aunt cry before, and it took everything in me not to fall apart on the spot when she said that, when she’d seen him, my Grandpa had looked just like he was taking a nap.

The house I was in at the time was my dad’s cousin’s here in New Jersey, and that’s where my parents and I have gone for most every subsequent Thanksgiving. The memory replays itself whenever I find myself sitting at the counter in that kitchen, and as a result, Thanksgiving Day itself will always be tinged with a certain sadness. Eight years later, and I still miss my Grandpa so much.

What does Thanksgiving mean now? I can’t say for sure. It is ever-changing, evolving, as is my place among my family and in the world. I’ve told my parents that I would like to have Thanksgiving at our house one year, because they have always gone to New Jersey, time and again. One tradition that I do love is that, in addition to turkey, we always have Italian and Syrian food with the Thanksgiving spread, and I want to keep that alive.

My passion for cooking especially means that Thanksgiving is more or less my Oscar season, and I want a chance to step up to the plate. I hope that I will be able to do most, if not all of the cooking for it one year, which would be my way of showing the people I love how thankful I am for them. Yes, the days of being a passive, distant observer of Thanksgiving are long over; now, I am an active, eager, and willing participant.

You Are So Beautiful to...Whom?

Yesterday, I read something online that said, "Repost this if you honestly believe or have ever been told that you are ugly.” I was able to see how many reposts it had received, and the number was almost shocking-—well past a million. After reading it, I realized I had a lot to say on the subject, which is why I am writing this.
His name was Tommy. I remember his shaved head. Even when the campus was bustling—after classes let out, as everyone ran to find their bus home—I could spot him from afar.
He followed me around, calling me “Ugly Amy”—over and over, from the moment I set foot outside the building right up until I got on the bus…and sometimes he followed me onto there, too.
Being called ugly while standing outside the school was often the cap to a long day of being called ugly while standing inside it. When it started—back in the dark ages of junior high—it was exactly that: Outside of me. Other people called me ugly, and I believed it was in their control. They decide if I’m ugly; there’s nothing I can do about it; they’re neurotypical, I’m “wrong”; they know better. I don’t.
In high school, however, it changed. When someone would call me ugly, the word didn’t simply die in the air after it was said. The voices that spoke it were not without; now, they were within. That “little voice” inside. The one no one else can hear, talking at me, every second of every day. Telling me that I was ugly—telling me it was my fault.
It was in my control now. If only I could get breast implants. Wear makeup. Get rid of my “weird” toes. Not be too skinny to fit into the clothes that would make me beautiful. I am ugly.
After being told the same thing, day in and day out, I internalized it. I believed it. It shifted the burden from them onto me. Not only did I feel responsible for being “ugly,” I felt responsible for others’ reactions to my “ugliness.”
I felt guilty for looking the way I did—that, if I could somehow be not ugly, they would have something better to look at, and they wouldn’t be so mean to me. To my mind, it wasn’t their fault they were calling me ugly—they were just letting me know, because I didn’t know it myself.
By high school, I more than knew it. I knew, and could never forget.
I haven’t thought of myself as ugly for a long time, but I don’t see myself as beautiful, either. To this day, when someone compliments me, says that I am pretty, or cute, I don’t really take it in. “Ugly” is what I am more prepared for. I don’t feel it about myself, and I would roll my eyes at someone if they were to actually say it. But, somehow, it still feels closer to the truth than “pretty” does.
It saddens me that so many people have been called “ugly” in their lives, or feel that way about themselves now. We spend so much of our time trying to look like this “perfect” person, but that person doesn’t even exist. The standards that society has created are so impossible to achieve that even the people we think of as the “ideal”—tall, thin, blonde, whatever—see themselves as ugly.
For years, I desperately wanted to look like someone else. People sometimes do these “celebrity lookalike” things (“Oh, she looks like Gwyneth Paltrow!” He looks like Ben Affleck!”), and in high school, I would be devastated when I realized the only person that I looked like was me. I thought I couldn’t escape it.
Well, I was right. I can’t escape it. But the only person I want to look like now is me. Because that’s who I am meant to be.

Writing's On the Wall

Whenever I hear a cadre of teenage girls cackling shrilly in the nearby vicinity, I still for a split second wonder if they are laughing at me.

I don’t really think they are. More than anything, it’s the volume of their voices that bothers me—because for some reason teenagers operate at a different decibel level than the rest of us.

But I still remember that awful feeling of walking around the corner in the halls in high school and seeing/hearing a group of kids start laughing as soon as they saw me. How my face would burn red with embarrassment, and how frustrated and angry I would get with myself because I didn’t understand why they were laughing, or how could I get them to stop.

This happened in the produce section of the supermarket today, hearing that laughter. Luckily, that moment of wondering didn’t last too long, and was immediately beaten into submission by Logical Amy, who then stood up inside my head, fist raised and shaking in the air, grumbling, “Hey you kids, be quiet, I’m tryin’ to squeeze some eggplants here.”

And I was me again, and I was okay.