Broken (in the best possible way)

by Jenny Lawson

It’s easy to say that suicide caused by mental illness is selfish. And it is. But not in the way that you think. It’s not the person being selfish by taking the easy way out. It’s the disease itself that is selfish. It steals away the very essence of you and leaves terrible lies in its place. It takes the logic that is true and twists it so that you can’t see things that are rational and real. That depression lies to you. You recognize these lies when you are sane or stable or balanced, but when you are in the depths of a depression they seem real.

And I’m lucky. I have support and insurance and a voice and money to buy the medication and treatment that isn’t provided to me. What about those who don’t have those things? We fail them. We fail ourselves. They are our children and our coworkers and our parents and the homeless person on the street and the boy who will marry your child and the girl who will save your life. They are the insurance clerks I speak with who tell me they deal with the same problems. They are us.

The pain is on par with childbirth, except that instead of getting a baby at the end you are treated like a drug addict as you demand the only narcotic you know will make the pain go away. I am quickly labeled a “drug seeker” (which is shorthand for “addict” in the ER), and it’s hard to argue with that because I am seeking drugs, because I’m addicted to the sensation of not being in abject pain. I’m weird like that.

I am reminded that (although it’s hard for our eyes to see) black is made of all of the colors, not an absence of them.