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Depression - RIP Robin Williams 

13/8/2014

8 Comments

 
I’m still reeling about the very sad news about Robin Williams taking his life on Monday.

And now there were more details about a leather belt and how Williams had battled drug, alcohol and depression for a long time.

With everyone, but especially celebrities, you can never know the inside of someone else’s life.

According to IMDB Williams had about 100 film and TV series to his name. Everyone must have seen a film with Robin Williams in it. My three favourite Robin Williams films: The Birdcage, Mrs Doubtfire, Dead Poets Society.

He was a great actor and comedian and I feel like losing a part of my childhood.

I am very sad for his friends and family, as they must be shocked that he’d take his own life. I have lost a colleague and a friend’s husband to suicide in 2009 and 2012 respectively. The affect it has to those around the individual who takes their life is something like I’ve never seen before with other deaths.

I read that women attempt suicide more often, usually as a cry for help, but men succeed more often.

Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50 in the UK. That’s from Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM).

I too have gone through some very dark periods of depression and it is something that’s always there, like Jiminy Cricket sitting on my shoulder. I have a variety of tools and techniques to keep little Jiminy at bay, ranging from medication I take when it gets really bad, counselling, to light therapy in winter, and also, the best therapy I think, is my writing.

Picture
Jiminy Cricket - from a Disney trailor, image from Wikipedia.
When everything seems awful, pointless, black and hopeless, I can fire up my laptop or even just hand write in my notebook, and write about how I feel, or how I don’t feel. Often the feeling is one of emptiness, of feeling like I’m walking around under a bell jar, separated from the rest of the world. Sylvia Plath got the analogy right when she wrote The Bell Jar.

RJ Scott wrote about depression on her blog, and she said she doesn’t write depressed or suicidal characters for fear of losing herself in them if she did. Which I think is a very sensible approach.  

That had never occurred to me as a way of coping with depression. Because humans are endlessly complex, and different, I do write characters dealing with depression, and suicide. Writing what Dominic goes through in And Then That Happened, was my way of coping with my own very dark period at the time. The supermarket trolley scene in the book happened to me. On more than one occasion.

I wrote about how Richard deals with depression in another WIP, The Guardian Angel, again based on how I’d felt.

For me, writing about depression does three things:
  1. It gets the feelings *out* of me, like when you write a diary (something else I do every day, as another way of coping I think)
  2. It helps me express how I feel, even if I don’t feel anything
  3. It helps me share with other people what it’s like to suffer from depression.

I think the third point is so important. Anyone who says, “Why did Robin Williams kill himself, he had money, celebrity, a family everything” really doesn’t understand depression at all. Cos it’s not about what’s going on outside, it’s what’s going on inside here *taps side of head*.

I first read about a depressed character in fiction in Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married, by Marian Keyes. It's chick lit, but rest assured, it's very good chick lit. Keyes sufferers from depression and the way she writes about Lucy’s depression is so real, it can only have come from her experience.

So if you suffer from depression, go to your doctor and get help. Don’t keep it all inside, tell a friend, colleague partner. When someone asks how you are, say “not too great actually” it’s amazing how that opens up a whole different conversation from the normal “fine”.

If you have a friend who’s withdrawn from socialising, or you haven’t heard from in a while, pick up the phone – call them. Just call them for a chat. Ask how they are. Go round and sit with them over a cup of tea and biscuits. Listen to them telling you how they are, really listen, without a smart phone in one hand and the TV on in the background. Proper, eye contact, no interruptions, listen to them.

You might just save someone’s life.

Liam Livings xx

8 Comments
Charlie Cochrane
12/8/2014 08:56:13 pm

As always, you speak sense. I can't pretend to having such an understanding as you do, but I have had occasional (very short, thank God) bursts of feeling that everything is pointless and that bell jar feeling is right.

Reply
Rj
12/8/2014 08:58:26 pm

Hugs. And very good advice. Xx

Reply
Liam Livings
13/8/2014 12:22:12 am

Thanks! Reading The Bell Jar was such a powerful experience. It's v sad but one of the best ways of describing depression.

Reply
Liam Livings
13/8/2014 12:23:57 am

Hi RJ, I don't think we talk about depression enough in the UK. if this makes one person call a friend who may be depressed, that would be great.

Reply
jules wake link
13/8/2014 06:11:54 pm

What an honest and moving blog. Thanks for sharing Liam.

Reply
Liam Livings
13/8/2014 08:24:36 pm

Thanks Jules. I think it's important for more people to talk honestly about living w depression. I don't say 'battling depression' because depression is feeling nothing & how do you battle nothing? Liam

Reply
Carol
14/8/2014 06:02:53 am

Thanks for sharing this Liam. The Time to Change campaign website has lots of good ideas for starting the conversation and how to try to reduce stigma.

A line from a Robbie Williams song always resonates with me: 'I don't want to die but I don't feel like living either'.

It really is good to talk.

Reply
Liam Livings
15/8/2014 03:18:37 am

Thanks Carol. Time to Change is a great campaign. It definitely is good to talk. I don't mind sharing about this sort of stuff as it doesn't embarrass me, it just is. :-)

Reply



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    Liam Livings

    Gay romance & gay fiction author

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