I woke up this morning to the news that Aaron Swartz had committed suicide yesterday. I knew Aaron only in passing, but admired his work, and it’s a pretty obvious loss to the world that he is gone.
I wanted to write this because for the last few months depression has once again been playing a prominent role in my personal and professional life both, and I’ve been thinking about how I was going to survive this thing that I now expect will be with me for my entire life.
As a bit of backstory, it’s been a long journey back to a point where I even think about depression in this way — as a disease (of sorts), that persists, rather than as merely a product of emotional circumstance. For a long time I stridently believed it wasn’t in any way a disease, since the medicalization of depression and mental illness works as a crutch for dominant political/economic systems that would rather institutionalize unhappy people than deal with its own bullshit. I still think that: I mean, if you’re not existentially, crushingly overwhelmed by the injustice in the world (at least sometimes), you’re likely not paying attention in all the ways you should be. The medical system that surrounds mental illness is still primarily one that diagnoses and then superficially treats symptoms of capitalism, be it poverty or alienation.
But not everyone is quite leveled by these things in the same way, and I realize now how susceptible some people can be to the overwhelming feeling of despair that I’ve felt at different points in my life. And these things can be inflicted on you too: if you’ve ever seen someone return from war profoundly changed, and unable to cope, you know what I mean. Depression is something that happens to you, and not always in predictable or fair ways.
(Side note: I think it’s really dangerous and revealing to see people pin blame for Aaron’s suicide on government prosecution. It’s obviously unfair and wrong for someone to be threatened like he was, but there are literally millions of people in this country who suffer equal or greater injustices at the hands of the prison industrial complex who do manage to cope. White folks, and people with privilege of different kinds are susceptible to depression and suicide more than others, and the assumption that this could lead someone to kill themselves reflects a privileged worldview that sees prison life as uncommon, rather than routine as it is for many people of color. Additionally, suicide, like mass shootings are contagious, and venerating someone as a martyr to a cause can very easily drive more people to self-harm. )
For my part, when it comes to dealing with my own particular depression, I’ve not (of late) felt like my options were the ones that Aaron apparently thought he had. But the options I thought I had felt rotten and it led me to think about how I was going to actually really confront this thing that was keeping me from friends, lovers and the work that I care so much about. For a couple months I had been walking around different options — in particular, diving deeper into the various interpersonal behaviors that I’ve come to recognize as a form of self harm (like abandoning relationships, quitting jobs, cutting down friends or colleagues, etc. etc.), or trying to enter therapy.
I know people who have used therapy to some success, and I briefly did so as a kid, but looking at what I realize now might be a lifetime of confronting this thing inside me, I really started to despair at the idea that this was my only or best option. For one, it’s expensive, and thinking about a lifetime of $100 an hour sessions felt incredibly burdensome. But more importantly, I didn’t want to leave this thing — which I had to remind myself, is often enough a fatal disease — in the hands of someone I had a business relationship with. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t sustainable, and I felt like I was putting myself in an incredibly precarious position. I didn’t know what would happen if I lost my job, or needed to leave it for other reasons, and I couldn’t let my mental wellness forever be tied to being able to cut checks to doctors on the regular.
Then there is the other thing which is harder to admit, but no less real, which is that I wasn’t quite ready to give up some part of myself to be treated. Depression is hard, it’s awful, but it’s part of the molten primordial stuff that formed the person who I am today, and I know for certain that without some of the episodes of deep, deep loneliness that I’ve passed through, I wouldn’t be in the place I am now, doing the things that I love.
There’s something internal to the attitude of therapy that I never could square with, in the strict medicalization of mental illness as an illness.
It’s incredibly hard to think of something that fundamental to who I am as a disease. It gave me something akin to vertigo, thinking that a basic part of my identity and perception was malformed, twisted in a way that separated me from the reality that other people were perceiving. It was hard to admit that my internal balance, the emotional and intellectual tools that I use to navigate my life were to be treated as if I were broken.
So, after I felt a few episodes of those self destructive behaviors arising in ways that were distressingly beyond my control, I sat down to figure out what I wanted to do. It was hard to parse out some of the things I was considering from those destructive behaviors (is quitting my job removing a source of stress that exacerbates my depression, or is it me ditching a source of joy to hurt myself again?). I also know for a fact I’m going to have to return to this moment again and again, and I had to keep myself from looking for solutions with the assumption that they would be a final resolution, a hope that had led me to hurt myself or others before. But, I think I came to what I hope is a good place, for now.
Here it is: I’m going to talk about this, with more people, and more openly. For one, I’m really really upset about the stigma that people attach to mental illness, and I want to play my part in confronting that, but I also think that starting this conversation with friends is going to be a part of my self-care. Instead of pouring my heart out to someone I’m cutting checks to, I want to walk through these rough patches with friends and allies so that we can be stronger together as a result. It’s not something I can do alone, and being frank about the episodes of depression keeps me from starting down the narcissistic spirals of self-pity that usually put me in my holes to begin with.
I don’t think I quite knew what that meant when I decided this the first time, and I think I should have thought through how to do this much more carefully, so that my first real attempt wouldn’t have had to come under these circumstances, but here it is. This is part of my life, part of who I am, and it’s something I’m going to deal with for the rest of my life. If you’re reading this far, I suspect you’ll be walking on this path with me in some way, and I hope we can walk together with the hope and love we’ll need to fix so many of the other challenges and sadnesses we will need to confront.
This is also my hope that the other people I know and work with who suffer in the same way will find ways to talk about this in their own way. This isn’t easy, but no one should have to take this alone, and I want to be a part of making it easier for folks like Aaron to find the support and community they need to stay alive.
