He didn't make it out of that, and never really stood a chance. I have to remember and be continually grateful for the fact that I live in one of the very first generations that do stand a chance to make it out alive.
It's so hard when it hurts, but when it doesn't, honestly, I feel like I'm kind of blessed to have been through what I have. One of my closest friends once got a fortune cookie that said something like 'the deeper sorrow carves into your being, the more capacity you have for joy'. It's something I've seen come up in different ways again and again, but it's so hard to hold on to when you're hurting. I think the most moving way I've ever heard that message was in a song written by another genius who didn't make it out of his depression, Ian Curtis.
The Joy Division song "Isolation" is all about feeling ashamed, lost, and utterly alone; about how depression disconnects you from the ones you love, and how futile your best efforts are to make things better. But at the end of the song is this amazing couple of lines that sum up for me the strange blessing that true depression and misery can bring:
But if you could just see the beauty, these things I could never describe
This is my one consolation
This is my one lucky prize
I have to learn from everything I go through, and I have to fight to take care of myself in all the ways I have available to me; not only for my own sake, but because I owe it to the memory of the unfathomable scores of men and women who died either because they were born too early, or because they weren't able to get the help they needed. Both those who were or are famous, like Vincent van Gogh, Ian Curtis, Mark Rothko, Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, Anne Sexton; and those whose lives touched fewer, but no less importantly, like my cousin Patrick, and my friend Sean. I owe it to all of them.
It's so hard when I feel like I do, but I try to think about what I would do (and have done) to help people I care about who were in danger of hurting themselves. I'm so non-judgmental, so understanding, and so willing to move mountains to help; surely I deserve at least a portion of that for myself.
