Reasons to Stay Alive

I just finished reading this funny, easy-to-read, and incredibly insightful book this week. Haig captures the essence of depression and what it feels to be depressed over and over again. I couldn’t put his memoir down.

“One of the key symptoms of depression is to see no hope. No future. Far from the tunnel having light at the end of it, it seems like it is blocked at both ends, and you are inside it…depression lies. Depression makes you think things that are wrong.” -pg. 1

·        “But depression itself isn’t a lie. It’s the most real thing I’ve ever experienced. Of course, it is invisible.” – pg. 2

Near-death

He talks about his near-death experience when he almost walks off a cliff because the depression was so bad.

·        “If you have ever believed a depressive wants to be happy, you are wrong. They could care less about the luxury of happiness. They just want to feel an absence of pain. To escape a mind on fire.” – pg. 18

·        When he stood on the cliff’s edge, “I stood there for a while. Summoning the courage to die, and then summoning the courage to live. To be. Not to be.” – pg. 18

·        But, like Albert Camus once said, “In the end, one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”

·        “Depression unravels you, and everything you have known.” -pg. 39

Haig is so refreshingly honest about his struggles with depression and I admire that about him. Sometimes I feel like he can see inside my own head.

“Things depression says to you:

‘Hey sad-sack!

Yes, you!

What are you doing? Why are you trying to get out of bed?

Why are you trying to apply for a job? Who do you think you are? Mark Zuckerberg?

Stay in bed.

You are going to go mad. Like Van Gogh. You might cut off your ear.

Why are you crying?

Because you need to put the washing on?

Hey. Remember your dog, Murdoch? He’s dead. Like your grandparents.

Everyone you have ever met will be dead this time next century.

Yep. Everyone you know is just a collection of slowly deteriorating cells.

Look at the people walking outside. Look at them. There. Outside the window. Why can’t you be like them?

There’s a cushion. Let’s just stay here and look at it and contemplate the infinite sadness of cushions.

PS. I’ve just seen tomorrow. It’s even worse.'” – pg. 51-52

It’s hilarious but so sad and so true for some of us!

The major theme running throughout his book is that while depression is real and it is terrible, it is not forever. There is always an end to the pain, just like there was a beginning. Our brains tell us we will never feel better again, but Haig himself, is proof that depression lies.

Reasons (for me) to stay alive:

My nieces look up to me.  My loved ones love me. My grandpa lives. Sunshine pouring in a window. Chew Toy and Fatty and the way they look trustingly into my eyes. A delicious hot cup of coffee. Books. Libraries and book stores. Elderly people and their beautiful, transparent skin. Memoires of my Nana baking biscuits.  Playing dominoes around the kitchen table. Parks wild and unkempt with their greenery.  Flowers and their delicate colorful blossoms. The smell of rain. Receiving a card or letter in the mail from a friend. Moist, melt-in-your-mouth gluten free birthday cake.  Shoes and socks that fit! Sun dresses. Squishmallows. Heavy blankets. Hot tubs and sudsy baths. Gazing across a sea of mountains.  Listening to ocean waves. Walking amongst trees. The relief of being forgiven. Long, deep hugs. A bottle of a you-can’t-beat-this red blend. Twittering birds.  Butterflies landing on tops of heads. Finding doctors that listen. A good meal with friends.  Journals with beautiful paper. Rumbling thunder and a rainbow peeking through storm clouds. Adorable animals like squirrels, prairie dogs, and pandas.

“And thus the heart will break, but brokenly live on.” – Lord Byron

What are your reasons to live? What makes your heart “brokenly live on” like Lord Byron once said?