Modern, or smart, or fairly shallow, I'm not really sure. But I believe that those friends of mine knew better than the sparkly sweet, glitter-y stories about love that we were read as bedtime stories back in preschool. Because if love was enough--if love was enough, it's not going to be indoctrinated into fairytales and children's stories and works of fiction because we would've known. No persuasion needed. But it has to be; because it doesn't come naturally as enough.
After the death of two admirable people--Ned Vizzini and Robin Williams--due to suicide resulted from chronic depression, I got to thinking about it a lot. Not about suicide, no--I am way past that teenage angst emo-years to be suicidal--but about... Why? They both have a family. Wife. Kids. Success. If anything, they're far more accomplished than the rest of the world population will ever be. Why would they take their own lives?
I used to think that it must be the hardest to be their family. Their wife and kids. It was as if they will be forever wondering if they were ever enough; if the love they gave was enough; if the deceased's love was ever real. What were they thinking, minutes or even seconds, when they were preparing for their death? What did they see? Freedom? Victory?
The more I think about it, fortunately, the more that I learn. Love is not enough. It will never be enough. It can be a huge factor for good measure, but more often than we'd like, it's not enough. Depression is not a disease with a remedy. It's a disorder. It was not meant to be cured, even by something as grand as love. I'm not an expert in psychology so I'm not in any capacity to speak about depression, but I know it will not really go away. Therapies can help, or perhaps there are some other methods that people can try, but they don't cure it.
Everyone has their own demons, who live under their skin and could at times get the better of them. People who commit suicide--they probably have it harder than you. We all come from different places; and that affects how we see life as it should be. Some people might've seen far better--or worse--things than you have even though you're the same age. We don't fill the same shoes. We didn't go to all the same places. So when someone chose a different way to die, it shouldn't be a tragedy. It should be their choice--and we must respect it.
So the bad news is... you can love someone so much, and they can love you with all they have the way happy people do it--but that's still not enough. So maybe next time you stumbled into someone depressed and suicidal, know that you can only help so far. It's their battle--not yours.
