Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. Among them, the largest percentage of suicides for the last 10 years have been among people between the ages of 45 and 54. In the past two decades, suicide rates have increased over 25% across the US, over 30% in some states. This data is conservative at best; because of the stigma associated with self-harm, suicides are not reported that way unless they can be proven. I think you would be hard pressed to find a person that has not been touched by suicide in some way. They have a friend, a family member, a work colleague... everyone seems to know someone.
This morning, I heard the news about Anthony Bourdain committing suicide. It felt like a punch in the gut, that feeling that takes your breath away when you hear something you don't want to believe. That moment in time when you know life is just different from that point forward.
No Reservations and Parts Unknown were both shows that my husband and I used to watch together. The food was interesting, but the people and places that Tony visited, his interactions with them, the way he spoke and the words he used to describe everything were the heart of the story. He was a celebrity who seemed to "keep it real". He didn't shy away from intense conversations about himself, his struggles, his past, current problems in the places his visited; he laid it all out there. He was genuine and eloquent.
I think when most people hear of someone like him (or Kate Spade, or Robin Williams, or Chris Cornell, or Chester Bennington, or Kurt Cobain, or ...) committing suicide, their first thought is why or wondering what happened that precipitated this event. Some sort of speculation regarding their state of mind or whatever heartbreak must have prompted them to do such a thing. But that is not my first thought.
My first thought is my husband. How he struggles with depression and anxiety every day. How he talks about how hard it is to continue just living day-to-day. How his relationships in his family tend to be strained over systems of belief (politics, religion, racism, etc). How he finds it so difficult to make new friends, people who have things in common with him; anxious about coming across the wrong way, about just being himself. How sometimes he just can't leave the house. How his support system tends to be a party of one: me.
Therapists will tell you that you need to find your joy, your passion in life and live it as the cure-all for depression. That or take a magic pill. Their advice is that my husband needs to figure out what his purpose is to find a more fulfilling life. What the hell happened then to someone like Tony? These people who have enough resources to find their joy and live their passion in whatever way they like? And who at the end of the day, still couldn't find enough reason to just continue living?
I feel like it is just some sort of unattainable goal to keep you focused on some better future. Like, yeah, everything may be shitty right now, but you never know what could happen tomorrow that would make you happier. Tomorrow, you may meet your person: the one who will teach you everything about being loved. Tomorrow, you may make a new friend that makes the biggest difference in your life. Tomorrow, you may be in that new job, or new city, or new country, or whatever, that will finally be the place where you feel like yourself, like you fit in, like everything is right with the world. Tomorrow... just hold on until tomorrow.
But Tony was already living a dream. He was a best selling author. He was a world renowned chef. He was a world traveler. He had won pretty much every culinary award you can win. He was wealthy. He was well liked. He was an advocate for people who couldn't advocate for themselves. He talked freely about his life when he was a heroin addict. He was honest. He had a support system. He had a daughter.
Maybe he felt like he had already lived life in all of the ways he could? Maybe if he went to a therapist to talk about unhappiness, they wouldn't be able to tell him his life would be better if he just found his passion or his joy. He already had. He already did. What do you tell someone who has a life like that who is still unhappy?
Personally, I have thought about suicide before. I think everyone has thought about it at least once. What would the world be like without me in it? Once, I came too close to doing it after Nana died. I found a therapist after that. My reason for not going through with it? My dog Casper wouldn't have understood. That may sound kind of pathetic, but he was the only one for which a letter wouldn't change the confusion.
I don't think about suicide anymore. I don't think I am the poster child for happiness or a healthy life. If anything, this blog is a testament to the struggles I still have. But I have built a life with friends and family that make me feel like I have a place in the world. I think I was so enmeshed with Nana at the time that I didn't know what life outside of her was possible. But living through her death, and later almost dying myself, showed me I still have some life left in me after all.
But I still worry about my husband. Being an empath, I know he feels the weight of the world on his shoulders. Limiting the amount of time he spends reading news or world events or the general way people continue to wreck each other every day helps, but only partially. Tony was the kind of man with the kind of life and disposition my husband looked up to and aspired to be like. If the world is too much for Tony, where does that leave him?
If I have a continuing point of anxiety, it is that one day the world will be too much for him too. That I will come home and find that he has died alone and on purpose. That at the end of the day, although this life with me was arguably the best part of his life, that happiness was still elusive enough that he gave up on the search. It is the fear that plays out in the back of my mind particularly on a day like today. When someone who was one of his few idols gave up his own search.
The past few years have been a struggle for him. I know that being laid off from his long time job in 2015 was more difficult than he lets on. It isn't a financial burden for us for him to be a temporary house spouse and take care of our home and animals. If anything, I saw it as an opportunity for him to find himself and figure out if he actually wants to pursue music. But the next year was what I would have to call a mini breakdown, or perhaps a mid-life crisis of trying to figure some things out and not really knowing what to do with himself. He tried neuro-feedback, and although it helped with anxiety it didn't provide any answers.
When I almost died in December of 2016, the spiral was quick to morph into PTSD and a new level of anxiety I hadn't seen with him before. 2017 was spent in therapy working on coping mechanisms. He was afraid I was going to die. He kind of freaked every time I left the house by myself. "Come back to me," he would say with tears in his eyes. I could see the pain and fear there, but I couldn't fix it. I think surviving the colostomy reversal without complications last November put his mind more at ease, but he is still doing the work of recovery for himself.
He has everything to live for right now. To a lot of people, he probably has an enviable life. But at the end of the day, if you have clinical depression, circumstances are irrelevant. You just wake up some mornings overwhelmed with sadness that doesn't have a precursor, a trigger, or a source. There is nothing that happens the prior day that causes it. There is nothing that will force you out of it. I can only offer my love and support, watch him fight with himself, and worry if he will be alive when I get home.
All of this to say, today I am sad that Tony is no longer. I hope his family and close friends find closure in such a difficult situation. I hope his daughter grows up loving him and his memory. And I hope he has found peace.
Let the people you love, know that you love them. Sometimes, the persona that is strong and confident and happy and joyous is just that: a persona. Sometimes people are battling demons you can't see and they will never feel comfortable sharing with you. People need each other. Particularly the ones who by all appearances want to be left alone.
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