I just spent an hour reading this article about David Foster Wallace (via Sweetney).
My chest is literally aching now. A short sharp pain that is just sitting there. DFW was an amazing man, An amazing, tortured, man. What moved me so deeply about the article was the similarities i felt with his life. The pain of being alive. The torment of being a quiet observer. The humiliation of mental illness. The shame.
The searching for something to make it better, to justify who you are, to make yourself better, prove yourself to the world.
The drugs. The pharmaceuticals that just don't work, or worse, change who you are. Make the world a dull, foggy, harsh place to be. And the fear of life without them. The fear of being helpless, of getting to a place when death seems the best solution to put an end to the suffering that is killing you anyway.
It also made me thankful that i've been to that place and have come back. That i am better.
Also fearful. Fearful for the day depression creeps back in, because i know it will. To believe otherwise would be foolish.
The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace
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I love you in that weird way that you can love someone that you only know through a blog. I’m so glad that you’re still here. I appreciate your struggle. Always try to remember, even on the darkest days, that the world is beautiful and the people who care about you do so genuinely and deeply.
I used to work summers at a church camp for mentally handicapped kids and adults. It was hard, and sometimes it was bleak. But something that has always stuck with me was the concept of “God’s grace coming through the cracks.”
I don’t know if I believe in God anymore – it comes and goes. But I know that those moments of grace coming through the cracks are palpable daily, particularly in the darkest, ugliest times.
Thank you for posting the link to this article. I ..uh, I can’t even gather the words. Your not alone, this story destroyed me.
god bless
I am experiencing mental health from a student nurse point of view…the days learning and studying the different areas and disorders is fascinating…I cant help but wonder if like you, I suffer from a mental health disorder…possibly anxiety which I know plays a huge role in my life…when I feel secure and happy, its as if the sun is always shining and I feel as if all is good..but when the rain comes with the dark, long days I too feel desperate with that cloud hovering near by and hoping it will clear in the near future…and when it doesnt, this overwhelming sence of fear manifests itself in me with anger…anger towards my kids and husband that is realted to nothing..maybe a dirty dish or an unmade bed…nothing but my own loss of controll…I too feel your pain and struggle…maybe not quite the same but similarily…
so within my expanding knowledge, when I visit the acute mental health patients and just talk..maybe observe, I wonder how well the medications work..I wonder if the signs and symptoms that I see are mental health related or side effects from the powerful meds that the docs prescribe…maybe we all share a little bit of mental illness….and some of us hide it better than others and therefore no med will help…I can only hope that we all make the right decisions, decisions that are strictly individual, the decisions that keep each one of us healthy in whatever form that is…
each of our lives are precious and it is our individual choice to decide which road to go down…and if it isnt our choice, lets hope the people making the decisions choose wisely…
after i read this i put down my computer, got in the shower, and sobbed for 15 minutes straight. just monumentally heartbreaking.
I find that one of the hardest things to deal with is knowing that the depression will come back again and again. My heart hurt for DFW, too.