I rang the bell and waited, but my friend didn't answer. It was strange, since his car was parked outside his house. I knocked on the door three more times and called him. After a few minutes, he opened the door and invited me in.
The curtains were closed and the place had a penetrating smell of alcohol and cigarette ashes. He sat down and lit a cigarette. He looked pale. It was not surprising since he was dealing with the separation from his girlfriend of years. I avoided the topic and we talked about common and trivial things. We had a couple of beers that relaxed the moment and later we went to eat. After that I left him at home again.
Years later, having a drink with him, my friend confessed to me that that day I visited him, he was about to commit suicide. He had the rope around his neck and was just waiting to make the jump. But my stubborn knocking on the door prevented me from doing so.
I saved him... without knowing it.
With the recent news about the shocking suicide of Robin Williams, concepts such as depression and suicide are once again under the microscope. “How can someone as cheerful as him commit suicide?” It seems to me that this sentence sums up everyone's thoughts on the matter.
Disney shared a tribute image, titled “Releasing the Genius”—an allusion to Williams' character as the Genius in Alladin. But is the genius really free?
First of all: What is depression? Is it physical or psychological?
Depression is a mood disorder—biochemical disorder in our brain—and it is basically both, physical and psychological, functioning like the chicken and egg dilemma with stimuli and responses—the line is very thin and practically nonexistent at the brain level. The problem is that it becomes incremental in a cycle in which one feeds the other. Remember that neurotransmitters (like dopamine) act like drugs when released in our bodies, so we are basically addicted to our sensations.
Some people are more susceptible to developing it for physiological reasons (heredity, biochemical imbalances, or people with certain conditions, for example highly creative people), and other people develop the habit—conditioning and stimulus-response—to generate depressive thoughts from experiences. traumatic, that after repeating them infinitely, we no longer question the behavior and believe that are our behaviour.
There are many classifications for depression, such as illness-triggered, postpartum, or seasonal, but they all work equally at the lowest level: the gap between satisfaction and dissatisfaction.
We all know what it feels like to be depressed, we've all experienced it on different levels, so in a way it's natural. But how to explain it?
Depression works within a construct of the mind.
For this, I like to use the roller coaster analogy: If we go to an amusement park and we line up in line for the roller coaster, as we advance we will follow a path with stairs, ups, downs and zigzags until we reach the platform. At that moment we don't really know how high we are from the ground. We can take this as the “initial condition” of our life: you are born poor or rich, healthy or sick, handsome or ugly, it does not matter, because from the platform the ground is seen far or near depending on what each person believes, It's entirely subjective.. Our mind establishes that initial condition or status quo. When the route begins we will go through ups and downs, and the rule is simple: the higher the climb, the more violent the fall will be and in the opposite way, a steep climb will be slow and difficult. The more time you spend at the top, the more difficult it will be to get used to being at the bottom and vice versa. Some people will find it more difficult during the walk, some will enjoy it. As you can see, the mind is what tells us if we are up or down in the same way we set expectations in our lives.
So if we are depressed and we ask ourselves, why are we depressed? The mind needs to create a strong, convincing argument to justify depression—and sometimes it does—but more often than not, it is the mind's inability to understand the impermanence of things that causes the most damage. Depression doesn't last forever, it comes in cycles—the most severe periods can last months—but in the end—like a roller coaster—we have to go up. But it is on the downhills where suicidal thoughts haunt our minds.
Is suicide—jumping off a moving roller coaster—the way to end depression?
I don't believe it. Why am I so sure?
Well, regardless of the religion or beliefs you have, dying is like going to sleep—if you die sleeping the transition is imperceptible—but multiplied 7 times.
Have you ever had a tough day at the office and you go to bed during your sleep without rest checking the problem over and over again? Sometimes you manage to find the answer—you are enlightened—and other times—most in fact—you don't. So if at the moment of your death, you have thoughts of defeat, shame, hatred, etc. Do yourself and reject your existence... I'm sorry to tell you that that's what your dream (death) will be about. If you are a religious person: I want to ask, how many times do you dream about your God? Because that can be a good prognosis to predict if you will see it if you commit suicide. And if your answer is “very often,” do you think he will be in a good mood? Everything indicates that what you will see is your loved ones suffering because of you—the representation of the feeling of guilt generated by the mind, even when the opposite occurs in real life.
Each one is the master of his destiny, and this includes suicide. Some people call them selfish, because of the pain caused to the family, however in the same way I have witnessed families keeping their clinically dead relatives in intensive care motivated by the same selfish act to not let them go—it is very easy to blame to the people.
At the end of the day we all die. Yesterday (August 11), Robin Wiliam committed suicide, in another scenario he could have died ten years after Parkinson's. Some battles seem less painful than others, but if we can't choose our battles, At least we can choose how to face them.
I managed to arrive at the most vulnerable moment of my friend's will, and now looking back, the episode that was seen as the darkest of his life, is in fact only gray.
Robin is now fighting to free himself from his demons in the afterlife—not in the literal sense of the word—and I hope that his desire to love life prevails. Like him, we need to understand that No one can free us if we don't do it ourselves.. Because we are the ones who put the shackles around our wrists. And if we choose to fight for it, it is easier to fight the battle here than in the hereafter (remember the dream analogy.)
Finally, I hope that for everyone out there, living their most vulnerable moment in their lives, there is always someone knocking on their door….
M. Ch. Landa
