Much as I mourned Robin Williams yesterday, the person I really felt sorry for was his wife. And his kids. Their lives will feel shattered into tiny, viciously painful pieces for a long, long time.
But that’s not something Williams was capable of processing when it felt like the bleakness within his soul would never end.
A continuing theme in my marriage disintegration was Husband’s insistence that I’d been depressed for the past decade.
I don’t buy that. I never did, never will. Sure, life got me down, but I always knew it would get me back up again. And, even in my worst moments, I never wanted the world to end.
Six months after he packed his bags, I feel almost explosively happy at some point in each and every day.
I’m shedding my old skin like a snake, and a shiny new one is emerging. I even surprise myself with the person that’s been hiding beneath.
Did I really say/do/think that?!?! And wow, people seem to like me regardless.
Mind. Blown.
Because it changes everything. I’m free from who I thought I had to be.
Oh, I still have my moments of uncertainty. But every day I get braver and the world gets more exciting and I am so, so happy to be alive.
Sure, I feel sad sometimes about the farked up thing Husband did to me. But that’s pretty normal I reckon. If I didn’t get sad I’d be way more worried about myself.
But poor, poor Robin lost that perspective.
And as the world grieves for a man they never knew, I hope they learn from it too. Not just that suicide is a terrible answer but, as Russell Brand wrote in The Guardian overnight: “I might be nice to people, mindful today how fragile we all are, how delicate we are, even when fizzing with divine madness that seems like it will never expire.”
housegoeshome 
because thats what u do to someone who u think is depressed – make it all about yourself & leave them…
mens ‘excuses’ annoy me!!
So glad to hear you’re “explosively happy” at some point during the day, Alana (great adjective!!)
Russel Brand’s comment is so sensitive and so true. 🙂
My daily smiles are enormous, even cute sonographers can’t dim them
Depression isn’t necessarily about something as big as ‘wanting the world to end’ though. It’s like an Instagram filter that colours your reactions to things, only you can’t necessarily tell it’s there. I’ve had some horrible shit happen over the years and I just assumed I’d get better, and that I couldn’t possibly be depressed. In my case, I wrote a lot of it off as what comes with a) having Irish history, b) being an arts jerk and c) working in print media, where a certain gallows-humour viewpoint is taken as read.
If you’re anything like me, you might well have been depressed but had normalised it because it’s how you’d felt all your life. Or because hey, my problems can’t be THAT BAD, and I’m happy sometimes too. But there’s still the switchgear in there.
Depression and associated illness is a bit like a pot boiling over. You have it under control (or aren’t even aware it’s on) until one day, you’ve got that starchy water all over your cooktop.
I’m a bit leery of ascribing too much to depression in Williams’ life (particularly as he had addiction problems and was bipolar on top of it). I think the story’s a bit more involved than the “depression kills” vibe that’s going around. But it’s reductive tools that work on social media, I suppose: Hoffman was killed by smack, WIlliams by depression. They’re labels we can hang on to rather than dealing with the whole (necessarily private and unknowable) truth of the matter.