The death of Chris Cornell by suicide, and the subsequent discussion of his death in various forms of media, has had me thinking about my own major episodes of depression.
When I heard about Chris Cornell I was so incredibly sad. The man was a genius, and the Temple of the Dog song Hunger Strike (sung in duet with Eddie Vetter of Pearl Jam) is my favourite song of all time. Oddly enough, though I love most of Soundgarden and Audioslave’s music, it’s this song I most identify with. It’s all about staying true to yourself and what you are doing, regardless of sucess or money. And that there is really no way of having more than you need without taking from someone else that can’t really afford to give it to you. Interestingly, Temple of the Dog was a collaboration between artists who would go on to be in Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, and was a tribute to their friend Andrew Wood who died of a heroin overdose in 1990.
The lyrics of ‘Hunger Strike’ have been running through my head all day while I’ve been thinking about Chris and what frame of mind he must have been in. I know only too well what that pain is like, having suffered so terribly with suicidal depression myself. But I also feel so devastated for his wife, kids, family and friends, because I’ve been on that end of suicide as well. I know a number of men who have taken their lives, and I’ve witnessed what that does to people. You analyse every thought, every moment, every word spoken, to see if you can find the reason. You relentlessly ask yourself if you should have seen it, if you could have done more. Whether you would have been able to stop it.
The radio conversation I listened to this afternoon talked about how selfish Chris was to take his own life. Neither of the djs had experienced depression and had no idea how someone could feel that way and not be able to think of what it might do to the people around them. One of the djs made the comment that Chris had everything, money, talent, sucess, a family etc and how could he still be unhappy with all that going for him. That he should have used his kids as an anchor and remembered what it would do to them if he was to die that way.
Now, I know that not all people who die by suicide have depression. And maybe Chris wasn’t depressed, sometimes overdoses and accidents happen. But he has said enough in the past about the struggles of depression to imagine that it could have been that, and even if someone doesn’t look like they are struggling from the outside it doesn’t mean that they aren’t.
I have suffered from depression since the age of 10 or 11. I have had a number of major episodes, but the worst one by far started in 2013 and almost destroyed my life. By November of 2013 I was in such a mess that I couldn’t follow a TV program or read a book, I certainly couldn’t work. I sat and stared at the wall and wished I was dead. It was the most pain I’ve ever been in and I couldn’t get away from it. It was inside my head and all I could picture was that permanent solution to it, death.
The first time I remember wishing I could die I was 11. I’d been bullied on and off for several years, and something expensive of mine got broken and needed replacing. I felt ashamed and guilty and like I was a waste of space on earth who just caused hassle and cost money. I wanted to die to escape from those feelings. On and off all through my teens I had dark periods, but as I got older they got longer in length and I fell that much further.
This is one of the poems I wrote in 2000, when I was about 17:
Darkness decends
And I am sitting alone
Outside
In the cold, crisp air
The rain stings
My sodden skin
As I watch the brightly lit house
Secure people bustling
Like ants in it’s inards.
Warmth emits from it
But does not seem to
Penetrate its walls.
It stands solid, fortress like
And unreachable.
I can see in
But they do not see out.
I shout until I am hoarse
My throat raw and bleeding
And still no one throws a glance
My way.
Then there is this one from 2001:
Can’t stop the voices in my head
The demons rising up
From the firy hell in the
Dark depths of my mind,
And trying to pull me down.
I kick them off and
Avert my thoughts from the
Sweet killing pain of the knife.
Surely I can find something worth
Living for
Something the shadows can’t touch
Which gives me some purpose.
The demons claw at my legs
Whisper thoughts of pain in my ears
And promise to free me from the
Burdens of living life.
I can’t make them stop.
Don’t even know if I want to.
Maybe I should just give up
And refuse to live.
I don’t think anyone would even notice.
And that’s the thing about depression. It makes you feel like you are in this black cloud. You can’t see anything but the bleakness. Life feels pointless and futile and I find myself questioning why humans crawled out of the sea and evolved from chimps and what we were we supposed to gain from that? And why I am I here, in this house, marking time?
I try so hard to think positively and be kind to myself but sometimes depression is not something you can tackle just by doing those things or getting more sleep/exercise/eating better etc. I am on meds and have been since my breakdown in 2013. I resisted them for so long, feeling like if I took them it would be like I’d failed or I was admitting I needed help. But they do help, even if sometimes all that means is that the edge is taken off things a bit so I can ask for help.
Asking for help can seem like scaling a very high mountain. You know you need to climb it to be able to move forward. But saying the words “I’m scared and I need you” can be incredibly difficult. How do you tell someone you care about that you are thinking of taking your own life? It’s like saying them and their feelings don’t matter to you – that you are prepared to hurt them in the most final way possible to end your own pain. But I’ve also been in the position where I’ve told a professional and been lectured about “how can you even consider doing that?”, and “think of your child and your family”. It took several years not to feel violently ill every time I thought of that conversation. When I opened up to someone and was honest about how dark my thoughts were they were more freaked out by them than I was. Once that’s happened once or twice you learn not to be totally honest about what’s in your head for fear of upsetting them or causing them to reject you completely.
There’s been a number of times the pain in my head has been overwhelming and I’ve wanted to end my life. Sometimes I don’t sleep properly for weeks, I can’t go to sleep or I wake in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep. Or I have terrible nightmares which make me fear closing my eyes at night. I’ve had hallucinations where I’ve been out walking and seen bodies hanging from the branches of trees. Some days everything looks grey and all the colour and happiness and goodness has been sucked out of life. I can go for weeks being tormented by thoughts of being a terrible person, a bad parent, a fat lazy ugly bitch, remembering everthing people have said to me about looking or acting strange and the times in my life when I’ve been bullied. Sometimes the demands of working and the house and being a parent get on top of me and the smallest thing can send me spiralling into despair. At times like these the thoughts can be so loud in my brain that I can’t follow the plot of a TV program or movie, or read anything, because I can’t concentrate. Occasionally the only thing that’s stopped me from taking a handful of pills is imagining the horror of Little G finding me. I couldn’t do that to her. Not that I didn’t want to, but that I couldn’t ruin her life like that.
Its really hard to explain what goes through my head in that position – its kind of like ‘whats the point. I don’t want to live my life but I can’t leave, I can’t do that to my girl and to my family. I really don’t want to be here. All I can see is the struggle – the depression in my past and the struggle to dig myself out of the current episode. My life is never going to change, no body will ever love me. Can I face being alone forever. What the hell am I doing with my life’. And on and on and on it goes.
You can see how I got to the point of self harming. When you mix underdeveloped coping skills with significant emotional disturbance like this, self harm by cutting relieved my pain without the final ‘solution’ of death that I craved. I was less conflicted by it. It released endorphins which helped ease emotional pain, allowing me to keep living. Not a healthy coping strategy at all but one which becomes slightly more understandable when you have some idea of the pain which causes the action.
And I guess this is the same type of behaviour that causes some people to drink and do drugs and engage in all sorts of other self harming behaviours. The trouble is that the more you use these ‘strategies’ to cope, the more you become addicted to them, and the stronger those pathways become in your brain.
Whatever killed Chris, whether it was depression or drugs or something else, the world is a slightly darker place without his musical genius in it. RIP Chris. May you find your peace.
Just as an added note, if you are in crisis please please please tell someone
Lifeline – 0800 543 354
Suicide Crisis Helpline – 0508 828 865
Healthline – 0800 611 116
Samaritans – 0800 726 666
Go here and read it right to the end.
ASD, BPD and Me 