The
death of the actor Robin Williams, long known for being able to
seamlessly move between comedic roles (as a standup comic) and
dramatic ones (Good Will Hunting, What Dreams May Come), has brought
about a national conversation on mental illness. This is nothing new.
We talk about it regularly following mass shootings (Virginia Tech,
Sandy Hook, Tuscon), though the conversation often flows downhill
quickly to a debate we are much more comfortable with: guns. It's an
easy debate we can all understand. Are you for or against this
policy? Yes or no? As Will Ferrell (as Harry Caray) once said, “it's
a simple question...a baby could answer it.” This isn't to diminish
the the importance of the issue, but that's beside the point today.
Today we are left wondering why someone who seemingly had it all, who
seemingly portrayed a man filled with joyful energy and got so much
in return, would take his own life. Unlike those previous aborted
conversations, now the mental component is squarely at the forefront.
We've
all heard the stories of the stars who “have it all” and then go
home to a lonely life (remember? There was a Britney Spears song
about it!). But why did this one take his own life in a calculated
way? No overdose. No alcohol-borne accident. Just a choice to end a
life.
A
choice.
Are
you sure?
There
has always been, among evangelical Christians of the right (and
Catholics, though to a different extent due to cultural differences),
“hard truths” and an affirmation of what's commonly called
“traditional values” among the American right as we've understood
it since the 1960s. It used to be that these sorts of “truths”
came from a pulpit presided over by a Jerry Fallwell or, for a softer
version, the Billy Graham Crusades. Man, rule your home. Woman,
submit to your spouse. Children, obey your parents. Man, be manly. Be
strong. Obey your boss or, if you work hard enough and are blessed by
God, be the boss. Work harder. Do it with joy.
All
things, do it with joy.
Now,
Fallwell was a “Free Will Baptist” as I recall. I'm very familiar
with this strain of Baptism. It wasn't dissimilar from the Southern
Baptist Convention I grew up in and attempted to immerse myself in as
a young man. My mother's family came from the FWBs. The FWBs had the
largest church in my hometown in North Carolina. I was friends with
FWBs, and was actually very close friends with and dated one. All
while I was fighting a battle that I thought was spiritual. A
spiritual battle which evangelical Baptists like myself believed
would be won by a triumph of Will. A spiritual battle that can be
solved by choosing joy.
I
chose joy. Over and over. I attended every “uplifting” event that
my church was involved with. I tried to immerse myself with music
with “a positive message.” I prayed. I thought about being a
missionary and bringing the joy of the Lord to the world.
But
how can you bring others that joy when that joy hasn't stayed with
you?
At
the root of the civic ideology we call Americanism, an ideology
affirmed if not promoted by most American churches, is the
individual. The individual is endowed by their creator with life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We can pursue it. We may never
get it. But traditional American values say that we are in control of
whether we achieve that destiny. Why? Because we are personally
empowered? Because we believe in the power of Tony Robbins?
Or
is the alternative, that we are NOT in control, just too scary?
From
among the collective voices of the media in the aftermath of Robin
Williams' death, there has emerged one voice from a Christian
perspective which has garnered much attention from Christian and
secular audiences. While it's important to understand Matt Walsh in context before reading into his attempt to merge the message of
“suicide always as a choice” with his brand of “prophetic
truths,” (this is a man who a few days earlier was fighting with aWal-Mart employee in a blog post in which he made generalizations
about that store's employees based on a negative personal
experience), it's more important to understand that his perspective
is not new. It's one I've been acquainted with for some time.
It
was sometime in later summer of 2002 when it all began to come to a
head for me. Memories I have of the period roughly from 1999 to 2002
are foggy, and what ones I do have are tinted gray. I was in high
school then, and I was lost in my own mind. Teenagers are notoriously
narcissistic, but this wasn't a sort of self-consumed obsession with
my image or future or something. This was a self-consumed
conversation with myself.
Or
someone else.
I
sometimes have a hard time pulling visions out of my head and
translating them into words. I can't paint a good picture of what the
scenery was like up there in those days. Part of my own illness has
been memory problems, anyway. But I can certainly remember the deep
grays and occasional darkness of my mind at that time. People who
knew me then might not have noticed it, but when I look at pictures
of myself now from that time, I see someone who looks like they're a
tourist locked in a box, flown around the world, and released in the
middle of a traffic jam in Bangalore, eyes distant and scared of
what's around him. There was no rational reason for this. I was on my
way to college. Heck, I had my selection of colleges to attend, as
far away as I wanted to go. Any trouble at home or at school or
around town would be gone. But there was no trouble at home, or
school, or around town. Or excitement to spread my wings and fly away
and start over in that young adult way. If there was a precipitating
event for my depression, I could get as far away from it as I wanted.
But there was no external inspiration for it. It was there, over me
and swirling around as if I was in the eye of a hurricane.
How
to escape it?
It
was August of 2002, and I was very close with a girl I worked with at
my stereotypical teen Christian job at Chick Fil A. She attended a
private Christian academy, attended a Baptist megachurch, and was
known for her bright dimpled smile and infectiously joyful faith.
We'd dated on and off. I told my friend that I was tired of life and
I had no solutions for solving my malaise. The only solution I could
think of was to shock my senses by running away. I told her that if I
didn't feel like I was worthless and drowning in shameful sadness by
October (her birthday), I was going to just leave. I don't remember
her saying anything at the time. Maybe just an "I hope you stay"
or something like that. My memory is fuzzy. After that day, sometimes
she'd tell me about some way she'd thought of to get me out and away
from everything around us that was lighthearted. She'd say things
like "let's just get to graduation and then move to the beach
and open a restaurant!" or "let's just go all-in on going
to college in Manhattan! That'll get you away from here!" It was
a nice try, I suppose, and I thank her for at least trying to turn my
spiraling depressed thoughts into manic dreams. But as I said, there
was no person or place I was trying to escape. Just myself. And
anywhere I went, I'd still have to deal with myself.
When
you are the source of your sorrow and you can't seem to bring
yourself out of the pit you are in, you suddenly realize something
very frightening about depression: something else has control over
you. It's possibly the most frightening realization a person can
make, and it's very much in opposition to what our civic religion of
Americanism, and in many ways, Christianity, teaches us: that you are
responsible for your life before God, who is sovereign over all.
By
October, this conflict came into sharp relief. I received a call from
my friend one night. I remember taking the call in my car, on the
cordless. It was brief. My friend told me she had been talking about
me with her mother and they came to a conclusion: I was somehow
rejecting God and Christ. As evidence of what accepting Christ was
truly like, she used herself and her family. They had reason to deny
God. They'd had financial struggles. They'd had illness in the
family. They'd had depression. They chose Christ's Joy and triumphed.
Maybe they still didn't have the big nice house and maybe they still
didn't have perfect health, but they had accepted Christ's Joy and
knew that the love of the Lord was preparing them for greater things.
And
I was someone who was rejecting joy and choosing to be surrounded by
these feelings.
Our
relationship reached a head finally in November when, during an
argument at our after-school Chick Fil A job, she pulled me into the
back of the restaurant to tell me something. She'd once again been
speaking with someone about me, and God had told her that my choice
to continue to be depressed and, increasingly by this point, angry,
was evidence of my lack of salvation. Once again, if I was truly
saved, I would have invited the joy of the Lord into my heart, and it
would be evident to all that I had been transformed. Apparently my
acceptance of Christ in the 6th grade, admittedly spurred on by the
first time I was taught of the visions shown to John the Revelator.
My
acceptance of Christ into my heart and my emerging from the baptismal
pool at my church as a Born-Again Believer might have been birthed in
fear, but I had remained faithful and sought the Kingdom of Jesus
Christ and the joyful message it brought. I chased joyfulness through
Christ the way Lebron James chased an NBA title. But unlike today's
King James, the people I surrounded myself with, who were good fellow
Christians who did all the stereotypical suburban teen Christian
things like listening to Jars of Clay and attending summer mission
trips, didn't bring about the prize I sought. Neither did my daily
devotions, Sunday School attendance, or seeking out of Christian
colleges to attend to "get myself right with God."
I
was devastated by my friend's words regarding my salvation.
Regardless of what the Bible truly said about depression, I felt like
I had been sentenced, having heard this from the person I most looked
to as an example of Godly love, who had seemingly stood beside me
throughout my ordeal. I scrambled for a scriptural response. I
couldn't find anything aside from the same scriptures we use to
encourage those who are physically ill. I didn't think of myself as
"sick" at all at this point. I just thought of myself as
worthless and heading for even more sadness and worthlessness as a
person, no matter what I did have going for me. I felt like I'd been
sentenced to be some sort of outcast who's inner voices were
constantly reminding him that he was one of God's unwanted children.
I
attempted to take my own life on December 18th, 2002. Details aren't
important. I do remember it was just hours after returning from
seeing 2nd Lord of the Rings movie. I don't remember being in control
of the situation at all. I was pushed forward by dark forces towards
the only solution I could possibly think of. I had actually been on
medication and was seeing a therapist by this point after one
particularly awful fight with my parents weeks earlier where I
revealed my feelings of worthlessness and sadness to them. After
being found by my father that night, I proceeded to fight with my
parents until the early hours of the morning. I was held out of
school briefly, but I still graduated and moved on into the future.
Eventually
medication solved some of my problems, and I am thankful for that.
The clouds lifted a little, the darkness subsided a little, and I
started looking forward beyond the abyss. I attended college close to
home and still tried to at least appear to be staying in Christian
fellowship by occasionally attending a friend's church, but there was
a period of about 3 or 4 years there where I was questioning and
skeptical of the whole idea of God. It wasn't until after college
that I eventually came to my current home in the Episcopal Church
following a chance meeting with the pastor of a Parrish around the
corner from my first post-college apartment. On the walls of his
Parrish was a simple, black and white sign reading "He Died To
Take Away Your Sins, Not Your Mind." I also need to thank my
best friend and his example of great faith in his own times of
illness, as well as my cousin, a pastor who may be more theologically
conservative than me in many ways, but who listened to and understood
me when I spoke to him about my illness, reminding me that we live in
"a fallen world." He works as a military chaplain,
counseling soldiers returning with debilitating mental illnesses of
their own, and his admission of the non-spiritual side of mental
illness is absolutely necessary in dealing with these wounded
veterans. I admire him greatly.
The
best medical studies we have of the mind confirm that Major
Depressive Disorder is the result of a chemical imbalance. Such an
imbalance causes not just the familiar depressed feelings, but a
complete reorganizing of certain thought processes in the brain. Some
of this can be corrected via medication, and behavioral techniques
can be used to overcome certain fixable behavioral hurdles in much
the same way occupational therapy can help a physically disabled
individual overcome a handicap, but it cannot cure it. While some
with depressive disorders can make great headway by choosing good
behaviors, many severe cases are not as susceptible to having a
strong spirit or will. Such a severe sickness can cause all sorts of
disordered and uncontrolled thoughts. We refer to the field related
to these sorts of conditions as Behavioral Health not because they
are "disordered behavior," such as that of children who
disobey their parents, but rather because they alter our behavior in
profound, harmful ways. The idea that one can control all their
mental processes via "choice" isn't born out by the
science. We accept this easily for other mental illnesses. No one
tells a schizophrenic to just shut off the voices (to mention an even
more stigmatized mental illness that I've seen kind friends succumb
to).
But
within conservative Christian communities and American society at
large, suicide remains solely regarded as a choice. This goes back
to the core of our civic religion: that we are sovereign individuals
who's happiness can be fulfilled through hard work. In the workplace,
this is one thing. In the inner realms of the mind, it is entirely
different. In saying that many aspects of mental illness are not a
choice, I am not trying to create, as some would allege an "excuse"
or a "culture of selfishness and entitlement." I am simply
relaying the truth of a fallen, broken world where not every solution
fits into the idea that we are in control. Indeed, such an idea that
one may not be in control of their very being in some way is quite
scary. That's why we need each other. That's why Christians need the
message of a healing Christ to give us hope to move on and out of the
darkness.
I've
been taking one medication or another for 12 years now. I've managed
to graduate college, get married, and hold down a job I find
meaningful and fulfilling working with disabled individuals. I am by
no means cured. I never will be. The biological nature of Major
Depressive Disorder doesn't allow for that. I have had other
instances of being pushed towards dark forces in these past 12 years.
With behavioral modifications and medication, I can resist them. But
they are still there, and they will always be hiding in my nightmares
and the deep parts of the attic of my mind. It is because we live in
such a broken and fallen world that can manifest itself in these ways
that we need the redeeming love of Christ to heal us.
If
you take anything away from this piece, let it be this: that you
likely know someone fighting mental illness, that their disease
should be treated with the same care and compassion you treat a
physical illness, and that it is not simply a problem of the spirit,
even in its darkest forms and behaviors.
