Patton Oswalt closed his most recent stand-up performance – 2017’s “Annihilation” – with something his late wife Michelle McNamara used to say: “It’s chaos. Be kind.”
That phrase ingrained itself in me the first time I heard him speak it, and it’s something I try to think about every day.
But it’s hard. Goddamn, lately it is just so hard. We’re losing people – good, special people – to the horrors of depression and suicide. People who have been putting that kindness into the world deciding, for whatever reasons, that they simply can’t stay in it any longer. Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain had rich, fascinating and unique lives, and yet something inside them – something dark and heavy and seemingly impossible to overcome – drove them to leave this world by their own hand. To most people, it’s almost impossible to fathom.
But I know what that feeling is like. I’ve struggled with crippling depression and anxiety for my entire adult life, and I am all too familiar with the kind of hopelessness that leads to moments like those. I’ve always managed to step away from the precipice, but unless you have been there looking over the edge yourself, you simply can’t understand. And there’s still such widespread stigma attached to admissions of mental illness that it’s difficult for those of us who suffer to talk about it to anyone but our closest people. I’m uncomfortable sharing this about myself publicly right now, but it’s something I feel must be talked about.
In discussions of suicide I hear people say things like, “That’s the coward’s way out,” or “How selfish of them,” or “But they had so much to live for.” And while those are all seemingly logical things for a neurotypical person to think, logic isn’t in the driver’s seat when you’re overcome with despair. If you’re trying to help a friend or loved one going through a depressive episode, pointing out all the things they have going for them or trying to fix what you perceive as the problem is likely to make them feel worse, not better. I know we all have that instinct to be the “fixer,” but often times all a depressed person wants is to just know that you are there. Be present. Give empathy. Acknowledge that they are hurting.
The hellish Zeitgeist of 2018 is getting to us all, in obvious ways and in more insidious ways that we’re not even yet realizing, and I know even people who are not usually prone to sadness or depression are feeling it. So please, talk to one another. Have empathy. Help each other. And if you’re hurting, even a little bit, please talk to someone. I’m begging you. All of my friends and family are creative people, and creatives tend to be sufferers in some degree or another. But we are needed right now. We have to make our art and tell our stories and move the culture forward even when it hurts, if not for ourselves then for each other.
I promise anyone reading this that if you are ever at that place and have no one else to talk to, you pick up that goddamn phone and text or message or call me. Please. You are never, ever alone.
It’s chaos. Be kind.
Read the fuck out of this of the day.
Precipice
Published
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