I've never mourned a celebrity before. I've been sad before over Heath Ledger and Phil Hoffman, but the news of Robin Williams hit me really hard. I used to watch celebrities pass and see videos of fans crying and I couldn't understand why they felt this way. Especially over Michael Jackson who I perceived as a child molester, I watched thousands gather and mourn him. Yesterday, I understood them, it suddenly became all too real. I actually cried a great deal.
Perhaps it just takes that special person that you've watched as you've grown up. That someone who's been there in your life to make you smile. Robin was that for me many times over. Sure he was a celebrity, I didn't actually know him, he wasn't family, and a version of me on 08/10/2014 would scoff at the idea of getting so emotionally involved with someone so removed from my own life. But the news came, and I was overcome with sadness.
He meant so much to so many people. Robin could make you laugh, make you cry, and make you laugh until you cried. More importantly for me though, in his movies so many times over he would play a character that would tell everyone that things will be ok, no matter what, and that life is worth living. Cliche' perhaps, but Robin had a way about him that you just believed him and it would sink in. He always knew how to warm my cold black heart and make me believe in life again.
Of all the messages Robin gave, my personal favorite was in Mrs Doubtfire. Sure the movie was really silly, but ultimately it was about something so simple and profound, that a father would do anything for his kids just to see them one more day. I am lucky enough to have a father and a mother who feel that way about me too, and that movie really reminds me of how much they care for me.
Life, of course, is a cruel bitch. Ironically, Robin left this world no longer believing in the messages he used to give. Many will point to his role in Dead Poets Society where a troubled young student took his own life after not seeing any way out of his father's hold over his life. In many ways, Dead Poets Society was about depression, trying to show people that these warning signs are so mild and hard to see. With Robin, and his depression, few if anyone really saw it. He hid it very well as most people with depression do because they feel embarrassed by it.
The news of Robin's death hit especially hard for me as my wife has depression too. I constantly worry that I might someday be the cause of her leaving this world like this and I'd never forgive myself. I often feel ill equipped to handle it, that I lack the patience needed or control over my own emotions and then remember just how delicate I have to be after going off the deep end on something stupid and then hating myself over it.
But maybe we should try to let Robin teach us one more time. In his passing we can learn that depression is a very serious problem. It can take even the most zany and hilarious individual and make him think there is no hope left and that no one cares about him anymore. People with depression see life black and white with few gray areas, polar extremes of joy and sorrow constantly flinging back and forth with no stable middle to take refuge. In severe episodes someone with depression will stay in extreme sorrow state for an extended period of time, which is exhausting and unrelenting. The best way to describe it for those of us without depression as I understand it is, you know that feeling you get when you make a grave mistake, something that you really messed up and you beat yourself up over it telling yourself you aren't good enough and just getting really down about it coupled with the feeling of insecurity? Well that's what someone with depression feels like all the time in one of those extreme states, and where most of us will get over it in a day, someone with depression will feel that for months or years at a time without it easing up, especially if its untreated.
If you have depression, please do not hide it. You will still be loved, and supported by those around you. Let them help you, let them in. Don't fight it alone, because life is worth living.
