A Choice?

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If we could just give half a shit about mental health & addiction in a loving and caring way, maybe we wouldn't feel so alone or isolated. Rather, we treat everyone afflicted like a pariah. It's so hard asking for help and it makes it almost impossible to take care of yourself when everything you feel has stigma attached to it. It's unfair and wrong how people feel like there is no way out from under it, when help is out there.

-My Friend, Sara Slagle

Just like every other asshole in the first world with a WiFi connection and an opinion, I’m going to take a time out to talk about the Robin Williams tragedy.  For those of you who have read any of my blog posts, you know that I have no qualms discussing my history of mental illness.  You know that I have no qualms discussing depression, anxiety, panic, fear, sadness, loneliness, hopelessness, self-loathing, worthlessness, and abandonment.  I have felt comfortable discussing those things with the internet, at large, because I would rather you know how crazy I actually am, than have you speculate about my mental and emotional well-being behind my back.  I also discuss these ailments frequently, because the more you think about them, the less frightening they become.  Knowledge and awareness are the first steps to acceptance.  And, of course, acceptance is the first step to healing. 

I know that nobody is asking why I am opening the discussion about mental illness again tonight.  If you grew up in the Western world in the last half a century, you were somehow touched by Robin Williams’ comedic genius.  Mork and Mindy.  Mrs. Doubtfire.  Good Will Hunting.  The standup comedy that revolutionized the laughter industry.  The man who gave the entire world the gift of relatable humor, is now lost to us because of mental illness and addiction.  While we are all mourning the loss of a human being who brought humanity into our lives, there are also a lot of pretentious nay-sayers who are degrading not only the memory of a man who brought us all such pleasure, but also the battles he fought with his own personal demons. 

Yesterday, there were no less than 100 posts in my news feed about the loss of a truly brilliant comedian.  But only one person mentioned how tragic it was that he felt so terribly isolated from the rest of the world by addiction and mental illness.  1 out of 100 people acknowledged that.  Of course, that was just the knee jerk reaction. At first, we were all so devastated by our loss that we didn’t want to acknowledge or reason with it.  But there was one young lady on my news feed who was thinking exactly what I was; who was feeling what I felt.  We weren’t just mourning the loss of a genuine heart and a brilliant mind.  We were also getting really pissed that nobody else saw the pain he had suffered. 

Then, this morning happened.  And suddenly, everyone had an opinion about suicide and addiction and mental illness.  There were some people who acknowledged the pain.  There were some people who acknowledged the mental instability that a brilliant mind has to contend with when it is so much further advanced than its surroundings.  There were even those who opined only the most genuine of hearts suffer from the sort of agony that our fallen hero felt.  But the opinion that stood out most to me was that of a pious douche bag.  The title of his blog read something along the lines of “Depression doesn’t kill.  CHOICE KILLS!!!”  

Ok.  That was a little abrasive, but that’s what I read on the interwebs today when I saw the headline “Robin Williams didn’t die of depression.  He died by Choice.”  I was astonished.  I was taken aback.  I was, to say the very least, repulsed.  After I got done throwing up in my salad bowl at lunch, I then got very angry.  VERY.  FUCKING ANGRY.  Initially, I was mad at the guy who thought himself so experienced and informed as to write such a judgmental piece of shit.  Then I was mad at the 15,000 people who liked it enough to share by way of social media.  Then I got really fucking irate at the culture that perpetuated the idea that suffering from mental illness and addiction is a choice.  Yeah.  We do that. Those people don’t just choose to feel inadequate. They don’t choose to feel alone and isolated.  They don’t love the fact that they have to self-medicate because their brains move too fast.  They don’t remove themselves from the people they love so that people will see them as eccentric loners, at best.  They don’t revel in the fact that they cannot go to parties or picnics or other community functions just to have others speculate about why they don’t participate.  Yeah, it’s a choice. 

NO YOU FUCKING IDITOT!!!  This lifestyle is not a choice.  It’s a corner that some people are backed into when they feel so overwhelmed by the weight they have to carry on a regular basis.  Don’t come at me with the “Your life is your choice” argument.  Robin Williams did not choose to be the comedic genius with a life stunting emotional disability.  Ernest Hemingway did not choose to be a revolutionary in American Literary thought, predisposed to alcoholism.  Albert Einstein didn’t choose to be a socially incompetent, scientific mastermind who required the use of barbiturates to stay, relatively, grounded.  None of those people chose that lifestyle for themselves.  They were simply forced to adapt to a world they were greater than. 

-Inner Peas