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I Almost Killed Myself & That Doesn’t Make Me A Coward.

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When I found out about Robin Williams’ death, I cried.

I heard the news from a friend. He was gone, but the way he went changed everything for me.

Gut-wrenched, I trawled the Internet for more information, and I ended up reading some terrible things that were being said about Robin Williams. There was good stuff, but not enough to overpower the misinformation. People said that because he took his own life, he was a coward. The coward part really hurt me.

How could people say that about someone who died of an illness? Don’t they know better?

Depression is not a bad mood or a feeling that can go away easily. It’s an illness that slowly takes you over. If someone contracted malaria and died because they didn’t get the right help, we don’t call them cowards because they failed to make themselves well on their own.

We know that they needed the right help, and died because they couldn’t get it.

Depression is the same; it’s an illness that requires the right kind of help for it to improve. And sometimes, even the right kind of help isn’t enough.

Here in Australia, suicide is the biggest killer of young Australians. It accounts for more deaths in a year than car accidents. It’s such a big issue, but we as individuals and as a collective are so unequipped to deal with it.

We make a much bigger deal out of safe driving, so much that we need to log in 120 hours as a learner-driver to be eligible to take our probationary license test.

But I knew nothing about mental illness until it hit me. I was not prepared for it. There was no 120 hours of practice time to learn about how mental illness can kill you.

When mental illness hits us, we don’t know what to do, and if we lose someone to it, we are left lost, frustrated, and angry. It’s because we don’t understand why. Collectively we are in the dark about mental illness, and because we don’t fully understand it, we are unable to be truly compassionate. We don’t have empathy.

We do have sympathy because we feel sorry for them; we pity them, but because we don’t understand the pain ourselves, our empathy can’t be activated. No understanding. No shared feeling. Thus we end up saying terribly hurtful things to each other, and that makes me feel guilty.

I feel guilty because I am not part of the solution. I felt maybe, with a chance of 0.00001%, if I had shared my story with other people instead of pushing it away every time, he wouldn’t have died.

If not, at least there would be fewer people saying terrible things about him because they would have understood depression for what it is — an illness so strong like a black hole that keeps pulling you into the darkness, not fully sated until it engulfs you completely.

I realize that my lack of action for not being open about my depression has made me a bystander. I know that unless more people speak about mental illness, it will remain a stigma. It will continue to be seen as a character flaw, a weakness, a failure of self-will when it really isn’t.

Depression is an illness with causes, triggers and physiological changes to the body and the mind, like most diseases.

I am moved to action and openness by his death. Every day I hide my story within me, and not out there shared with someone, I am helping depression remain as a taboo.

So I’ll say it now, loud and clear: I had depression and I almost killed myself. It wasn’t my fault, I got help, and I am okay now. You can be too.

What I crave now, and in this life of mine, is to help people to feel okay. To do that, I have to be open enough to say that feeling not okay is okay too.

 

*****

NyamkaBayanmunkhNyamka Bayanmunkh is a simplicity coach who helps people be well, do good, and change the world all whilst living regret free. Last year she wrote a guidebook which chronicled her  experience with depression. You can find her at her blog, A Girl Called Nyamka, on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest.

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