I sat in my car in the parking lot of my mental health clinic, crying and debating. Finally, at the very last second, I decided. I called up my therapist and left a message: I can't come to group today. I just can't do it. Within moments, she called back, but I sent it straight to voicemail. I drove back home, sobbing the whole way. My heart was heavy with guilt. It was a gorgeous sunny day, not too hot. My 2pm group therapy would have been the first time I'd ventured out of bed for the day. No surprise there. I'd already wasted half the day as it was. How could I justify spending the next two hours in a windowless, climate controlled room at a conference table?
When I got home, I grabbed the dog and started walking. And walking and walking. I looked at the time on my fitbit: right now my sister and her wife would be sitting down at a teen-aged boy's funeral who had committed suicide. I never met him. I barely knew anything about him. I didn't even live anywhere near him. But through "three degrees of separation" I felt connected to him. Maybe even felt a mild sense of responsibility for the outcome. Through a quasi-game of "Telephone," I shared snippets of my experience and advice, racing against the clock. A clock I know all too much about.
The boy's situation immediately took me back to when I was a teenager. My family was clueless. No one knew what was going on or how to help. But that's the trouble with depression: in the beginning, it can be an out of control freight train ready to careen off a cliff. Not therapy, nor medication, can catch up in time to throw the breaks on. It's scary for everyone involved. Recovery is a journey; it takes time- time that might not exist.
Lately, as I've become more mentally stable, I've felt a bit of a responsibility to help others. The trouble is that I have no idea what the best outlet is for that little voice inside me pushing me to act. When I found out about this troubled boy, I was ecstatic that I could offer up something valuable to his family. Due to the outcome, it was obviously not enough. Even though I know it's not rational, a tiny piece of me feels like I should have done more. Maybe if I tried harder or was more persistent, all this wouldn't have happened?
I could make a list of people that I know who have committed suicide. But I don't know any of them, really. It's a boy I had a crush on, who played a wicked dentist in Little Shop of Horrors. I just about floated off the ground that one time he passed me in the hall, completely oblivious to my existence. It's my high school sweetheart's "baby" brother who now lies in a grave many years later as a teen. It's my sister-in-law who I hoped to become closer to, but never had the guts (or apparently, the time). I knew she also struggled with mental health, and I had hoped we could both find comfort in that commonality. I put together a "care package" one time, thinking the effort to reach out to her might help. Later, after her death, I found that shoe-box in a closet in my house- unsent. Bath crystals, lip balm, a candle, a funny romantic novel, and some other things that I can't remember now. For a long time, I saved that box. Every time I looked at it, it was a reminder of what I had failed to do. If I had sent it, would she still be alive? Would it have been the grain of rice that tipped the scale in the other direction? After awhile, I dismantled the box and its contents- I had tortured myself enough; It was time to move on.
As the flies keep dropping around me, I feel more frustrated at my seemingly powerlessness. People that are just fingertips away, wishing I could help, but not knowing how. I put so much weight on myself to save the world from mental illness, so to speak. I know the responsibility is not all mine. I know I can't keep telling myself, "If I would have done X, this person would still be alive." I suppose it's just as silly as saying, "If I would have brought dinner over to that neighbor suffering from cancer, then maybe they wouldn't have died from it."
And so, I will continue my search for an outlet for this need to help others bursting inside of me. A need more ferocious than that damn freight train. Maybe "Super Bex" can stop that fucker. Or maybe lots of us regular ol' people joining together.
