This was going to be a very different post, but then Anthony Bourdain killed himself the same week Kate Spade killed herself. I thought about many things in the aftermath, but more than anything, I thought about my cuñada. She died by suicide five years ago.
Cuñada means sister-in-law in Spanish, even though we weren’t really sisters-in-law. Our connection was complicated. We were more than friends, connected via family. We didn’t grow up together and didn’t see each other often. I miss being able to take for granted that she’s alive in this world with me.
When she died, I remember feeling I had the power to undo what she had done, to just snap my fingers and make things be different. I couldn’t get my head around the concept of gone forever.
When reality set in, I tried to make sense of her death by creating logical reasons for her choices. She e-mailed me a few months before she died to say she’d been taking medication that made her wacky. I thought I responded to that e-mail but after her death, I went back to see I hadn’t. I planned to but didn’t because at the time I was feeling so sad and shitty, I could barely get through my own days.
“It must have been the medication,” I told myself because the woman I knew wouldn’t kill herself. Something had to have changed to push her beyond her limits. There must be some piece of information missing, something that if I only understood, I’d understand why her depression and desperation lead her toward death and mine did not.
Do you want to know the truth?
So many of us feel alone.
So many of us are told to just snap out of it.
We’re told we just want attention.
We’re told to get help but not offered concrete solutions or support.
We’re told to reach out.
We are told we’re too much.
We are told in so many spoken and unspoken ways that what we feel is shameful.
We reach out for help, and even then it is not always enough.
Because the very soul of depression, anxiety, and suicide is the truth no one wants to hear. We don’t know how to handle it when we see it, and we do our best to push it away.
What shocked me about Anthony Bourdain is he didn’t seem the type. He seemed so sure of himself. He traveled far and spoke truthfully about the places and people he visited. He pissed people off with a clarity and confidence that painted him a person who knew himself.
I assumed he was too self-assured to kill himself.
The truth of accepting our grief
Last week, also, Elizabeth Gilbert wrote an incredibly powerful piece about the death of her soulmate Rayya Elias.
“I am willing,” she repeats. She is willing to accept the painful truth.
“When Grief comes to visit me, it’s like being visited by a tsunami. I am given just enough warning to say, “Oh my god, this is happening RIGHT NOW,” and then I drop to the floor on my knees and let it rock me. It’s a full-body experience. To resist it is to be brutalized by it. You just bow down — that’s all you CAN do — and you let this thing roll through your heart and body and mind, in all its vehemence.
How do you survive the tsunami of Grief?
By being willing to experience it, without resistance. By being willing to feel everything. By being willing to accept the unacceptable.
The conversation of Grief, then, is one of prayer-and-response.
Grief says to me: “You will never love anyone the way you loved Rayya.”
And I reply: “I am willing for that to be true.”
Grief says: “She’s gone, and she’s never coming back.”
I reply: “I am willing for that to be true.”
Grief says: “You will never see her walk in the door again.”
I say: “I am willing.”
Grief says: “You will never have access to her wisdom again.”
I say: “I am willing.”
Grief says: “You will never hear that laugh again.”
I say: “I am willing.”
Grief says, “You will never smell her skin again.”
I get down on the floor on my fucking knees, and — and through my sheets of tears — I say, “I AM WILLING.”
Me? I don’t really understand this level of grief, because I have not yet known the loss of someone so central to my own existence. I can listen, but I will never truly understand unless I experience for myself. I know one day I’ll have to face a loss this huge. Such is the nature of life, and this truth frightens me.
Depression and suicide are different, though, in that they are not just the nature of life. They are a disruption to the way we live. They split us from who we think we could be and how we could live joyfully if only… if only… if only. If only we could break through that veil and access what’s right in front of us.
Living with a depressed person is also hard. It’s overwhelming to see someone you love in such enormous pain, unable to fully take part in life. Their reality is not your reality. Why can’t they just get past it and join the rest of us?
It’s easier to accept Elizabeth Gilbert’s words about grief because she arrives at an island of peace and understanding. It is a different animal to depression and suicide. How do you resolve in yourself that someone you love left you by choice. Do you blame yourself even though you can never be responsible for the actions of another? You’ll wonder what if, what could I have done differently, what didn’t I see, what if I’d replied to that last e-mail.
Do you ignore the truth?
Anthony Bourdain’s truth pried open the box, set free the can of worms, unlocked the door to the basement where the bogeyman lives. He asked us to believe women and to open our eyes to the truth of race and inequality in the United States and around the world. He let us know people are being hurt and we cannot whitewash that pain because it inconveniences us or makes us uncomfortable. It is not a moral or human thing to do.
Perhaps his honesty caused some of his pain. From my vantage point watching on the couch, I saw him speak out and stand tall. I never heard about the pushback and criticism he must have experienced.
I can only imagine and extrapolate from things I’ve seen in my own professional life. When I’ve said or done things that made others uncomfortable, I have been batted down, shut out, criticized and blocked. What’s even worse is when the attacks happen silently, behind my back, where I see something going on by how others suddenly stop talking to me or they’re clipped in their words. Yet, I can’t prove anything.
It’s easy to blame myself and think these things are happening because I’m not good enough. I must be the problem. It makes me want to disappear. These are the same ways depression sabotages us to believe we’re unworthy.
I’ve seen how social media galvanizes groups to destroy people because they don’t like their message. Not just online, but by finding where they live, threatening their families, taking away their livelihood, safety and self-possession. I’m petrified of the attack. It makes me want to hide.
I always assumed Anthony Bourdain didn’t have these same fears, but maybe he did. Maybe he spoke out in spite of being attacked. Maybe he faced the terror all the while battling sinister feelings inside himself.
I’ll never know about him, but I know this is me.
We are deeply contradictory creatures.
Humans eat dinner, get angry, do shitty things and love their children. We are endlessly flawed and beautiful. We shit ourselves and try to kill ourselves and cause each other immeasurable pain. Humans are exquisite in our ability to uncover great joy as well, but we harm each other badly when we don’t listen to each other.
The truth is a medicine. No matter how awful it may taste, you can only get better if you have a clear diagnosis and treatment. Just as you cannot sleep off a broken ankle, you cannot thoughts and prayers racism, anti-semitism, and bigotry away. Depression, anxiety and other mental health issues cannot be hoped out of existence.
Ignoring what ails us is a band-aid. It simply means we cannot see for the moment, but our truth comes back,angry for having been unseen so long, saying “You will not overlook me this time.”
Yes, we all need breaks. It’s too much to take the weight of the world every minute of every day unflinchingly. Instead, we must engage in self-care. We must fortify ourselves with love, friendship, food and rest. All of this prepares us to face the truth, each in our own way.
“What does this have to do with writing?” you ask?
I dunno. Nothing? Everything? I believe what we write reflects a core human truth. It shows what’s important to us. I also believe what we put into the world has the power to support or detract, lift up or tear down. Telling the truth is the best way to create a better world.
Truth comes in many forms. It can be funny, fantasy, science fiction, novels, personal essays. It isn’t always as heavy as what I’m writing here. But I do believe our writing puts our personal truth into the world to live for as long as people read our words.
