I have several friends who struggle with depression. Since Ian’s suicide, I’ve done some more research, trying to see how best to help the rest of them. In doing so, I’ve figured out some things I could have done better for him.
It’s possible that those things wouldn’t have helped. But maybe, if I’d known more about it and taken his depression more seriously, I could have waylaid him.
He ordered his supplies online on February 7th. On the evening of the 8th, after they’d shipped, he talked to me. Told me he was feeling really stressed about a lot of things. I told him I had faith that he’d get through and be able to do them. He changed the subject to movies thereafter, so I figured he was fine. If I’d have read the guides I’ve been reading before then, I would have pushed a little. Offered more help. Made sure he knew that I was there for him.
By then, he’d already decided, I think. So it may not have made a difference. But it might have. It may have helped just enough that he decided against it.
I’m torturing myself with this now, because I wish I’d known. I wish I’d told him I was there to help. That I wanted to. That I loved him.
It’s no good now. Too late. And maybe it wouldn’t have helped. I don’t know maybe that night while we were together, I did offer. It’s possible. I don’t recall exactly.
It sounds stupid to say, but I hate that he’s gone. Sometimes it’s…. not ok. Never ok. But not as completely devastating… not often. But sometimes, I feel more able to deal with it. But now? And most the time, I can’t begin to say how much I hate it. How destroyed I am.
There’s a tag that the barbershop chorus I was starting to join was practicing… A tag is a small little ditty that you can sing before or after a song as an intro/outro… It says, “Good in all things I see, but when you’re leaving me, I can’t see the good in goodbye.”
I’ve thought that so many times. There’s no good in this. There’s not even any ok in this. There’s terrible in this. There’s horrific. There’s heart-breaking. That’s probably the biggest reason I haven’t gone back to the chorus. That, and the fact that he was so excited to see me sing with them. I don’t think I could last anywhere near a whole song. I just can’t.
He was my world… much as I tried not to let him be. Much as I attempted to be casual. And now my world is dead. I feel like this endless winter is fitting. How can spring come and things start living again, when everything inside my heart feels so dead? When he’s dead?
And yet spring comes. Eventually. I will have to face it, and I’m not sure how. Spring and summer have always been more depressed times for me. (Atypical SAD, yay!) So I’m taking my Bupropion, talking to my therapist, and doing everything I can to alleviate it. I’ll make it through. There’s no other choice. But this isn’t going to be an easy year.
Written 4/15/2014
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