Comments | ellen_kushner: Living people can change things, dead people cannot

ellen_kushner

Living people can change things, dead people cannot

Jan 12, 2013 19:45

Cory Doctorow just lost a young friend. His memorial post includes this beautiful, beautiful, true writing about depression & suicide:

I don't know for sure whether Aaron understood that any of us, any of his friends, would have taken a call from him at any hour of the day or night. I don't know if he understood that wherever he was, there were ( Read more... )

depression

Comments 15

taraljc January 13 2013, 00:51:27 UTC

I am hugging you using the power of my mind, auntie-sister.

ellen_kushner January 13 2013, 00:56:14 UTC

Aw, baby, I got off light - don't think I didn't! And it's given me a lot more sympathy - nay, empathy - for what true depression means. Which is, oddly, a good thing.

But thanks, always, for all the hugs. Back atcha.

taraljc January 13 2013, 01:05:46 UTC

I wasn't int he best headspace at WisCon either (I've been battling depression for a few years now, thanks to friends and meds and trying not to judge myself so hardshly), but finally getting to hug you and your lady wife was a highlight of my 2012. I'm so glad I have you as a sister-auntie.

ellen_kushner January 13 2013, 01:16:23 UTC

Getting to hang out with you there was one of the real joys of WisCon for me this year. Truly. You're such a pleasure!

comrade_cat January 13 2013, 02:19:44 UTC

Thank you for reposting. I will be doing that too.

I went into the psych hospital once, but never got as far as acting out the actual attempt. My colleagues killing themselves affects me a lot now.

ellen_kushner January 14 2013, 20:47:00 UTC

It's good to be able to get and give help. The only way this whole being alive thing will ever work!

I did a whole "Sound & Spirit" show called SURVIVING SURVIVAL
http://www.wgbh.org/programs/Sound--Spirit-226/episodes/Surviving-Survival-5009

I didn't talk about suicide in there, but I probably should have.

tylik January 13 2013, 02:56:43 UTC

I got lucky in the genetic lottery, with regard to neurochemistry. An awful lot of the people I came of age with (not even to go into my family) did not. It's kind of weird, having just gotten back from the west coast and dinner with a lot of those of us who used to be 13 year old university students together. I'm kind of amazed that most of us made it this far. (And in some cases have had kids. Really great kids. Wonders never cease.)

I didn't know Aaron. I know a lot of people who did. That part of the social web... we've lost a lot of people to suicide. I can't really describe the grief and the rage. And I'm a little frightened, because some of my close friends are so close to being consumed by bitterness already.

Once, when I was living on a housebarge, a 15 year old girl jumped of the bridge I lived next to, and died essentially in my driveway. You can only wonder at whether the world might have been different if you had been walking on the bridge just then. Or maybe, next time.

ellen_kushner January 14 2013, 20:45:07 UTC

I think I've been pretty lucky, too. Losing people like that, whether you know them well, or not . . . It makes us all Survivors, doesn't it?

In depression, one's world becomes very small, one's despair total. That's why Cory's line about taking a call any hour made me tear up - because of course it's true - and you may even know it the rest of the time - but when you're in the grip of what Winston Churchill called "the black dog that follows me everywhere," it's not easy to see. Humorist Art Buchwald also wrote very movingly about it.

editrx January 13 2013, 04:04:20 UTC

I'd heard of this before Cory put up his post, and it hit me -- as you can imagine -- pretty much at home. Though I'm nowhere near Aaron's situation, as far as the big circle friendships he didn't realize he had, and the sheer brilliance he was.

ellen_kushner January 14 2013, 20:41:49 UTC

Oh, I get the sense that you've got a pretty huge friendship circle, too! What Cory says is true. Believe it.

martyn44 January 13 2013, 09:39:42 UTC

Every moment of every day that black dog is scratching at the back door of someone we know, someone we love, someone we could help if only they would just turn and say something. Only the one thing that never changes about the black dog is that the first thing it does when it comes visiting is takes away the insight to know we only have to say 'please', that we are not alone, that we are worth helping. Help is there. Just reach out. Please.