Death, Depression, and Spoons

There has been a lot of talk since Chester Bennington killed himself. People who are mostly in good headspaces are bringing up all the reasons why people who commit suicide are selfish and awful. If they are doing this because it's their way of processing the grief and fear they're feeling, it would be nice if they'd keep their little opinions to themselves. If they are doing this to try to discourage others from suicide, then they need to shut the fuck up. They're not helping.

I've talked about Spoons Theory on the blog before. In fact, I've probably even talked about it in terms of Depression. But just to remind you, to try to help people understand what it's like to be sick, the author asked her audience to consider what it would be like if stamina (energy, vitality, strength, etc) could be measured in an allotment of spoons. Healthy people have a lot of spoons. Sick people have very few and have to make choices about how they can maximize their spoon allotment and not completely run out.

When you have mental illness, quite a few of those spoons are always automatically allotted toward dealing with your mental illness. You have no choice in that matter. Your mental state places a certain level of energy from your mind, emotions, and body into whatever chaos suddenly decides to go down. For some people, this may mean you're bouncing your foot or twitching your face. For others, it may mean restless pacing and an agitate inability to sit down. It could mean a constant flow of babble you can't manage to stop. Or stomach pains. Or a suspicion about everyone around you. Or actually seeing and hearing things that aren't there.

With Depression, this energy usually gets wasted up in remembering all of the Depression Truths. These are statements that, to be honest, even on your best days, you can't shake. Life is a cruel joke. You will never be happy. This is the least amount of pain you will ever be in. You will never lose weight. It is all your fault. No one really loves you. People are using you. You are a failure. There is nothing to hope for. All the positives out there, feel like lies. All of the counter arguments feel like pithy bullshit someone tells you to keep you quiet. All of the darkness feels like the truth and you feel like you're at the bottom of a well you will never ever have the strength to climb out of.

I don't necessarily want to kill myself... I just want to become dead somehow.

When I read the above lines from Hyperbole and a Half: Depression Part Two, it was one of the truest things I'd ever seen. That line explained everything about the darker days of my life. In some ways, it explained things about even the better days of my life. Killing myself seemed too dramatic. Instead, just being dead sounded great. People fantasize about this death like other people would fantasize about a dream wedding. I go to sleep and I just don't wake up. I'm watching my favorite movie and my heart just stops. This dream death seems like the sweetest thing because it is an end to all the pain and hell and screaming and demands and failures and exhaustion.

See, I think exhaustion is the key. I think a lot of people kill themselves because they are exhausted.

You have so many spoons every day, and with mental illness, some of those spoons are being taken away so the illness can do what it does. If you want to try to function, you have to allot other spoons to fight the voices in your head (heart, body, spirit). You have to try and rationalize away the crazy. You have to soothe yourself. You have to run through all the techniques to try to stay calm. To try and be positive. To try and move forward. Keep in mind, this is while you're trying to do everything else. You're trying to deal with other people and trying to meet your responsibilities and trying to keep your body running. There are days when all of it is too much. You run out of spoons before you run out of day.

That's why you'll see people at a dinner table and stare, unable to finish the meal.
That's why people will sit on their shower floor and let the water hit them, unaware of anything until they snap back into reality and have no idea how long they've been there.
That's why people will get into cars and drive and drive and drive, sometimes to never return home.

I won't presume to know what was going through Bennington's head. I do know that for many people who commit suicide, there is often this moment when they realize there is too much pain to just keep riding things out until they 'just become dead somehow.' They realize they have to take action because it's the only defence they have left. That isn't selfish. That's just all they have.