I Swear You Will Be Fine

Months ago, in one of our darkest moments, I asked you to tell me something, anything, that could make your pain go away. I asked you to give me something to do to help you ease your sorrows. You couldn’t give me an answer, because I think you didn’t have one either. Instead, you read me an excerpt you found by David Foster Wallace. It goes:

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”

I remember this night so clearly. I was in Japan, and we were talking over the phone. I had to muffle my cries because my family was asleep a few feet away from me. I remember crying harder than I had ever cried that night – because I had no idea how to help you. I’m standing at the foot of the burning building, begging you to hold on, begging to be your fire extinguisher. Years of interest in psychology, years of reading books about mental health and the pain people go through, classes after classes on disorders and symptoms and tell-tale signs and treatment, and I had no idea how to save you. It was like trying to catch sand with open hands – no matter how tightly I tried to hold on, the sand kept slipping through. And I tried so, so hard to hold on.

A lot of me still wonders what I could have done. What could I have said? I had no idea how to remind you to look forward to the future we so excitedly planned. I wish I could have told you to imagine how life would look if you were to leave. Would that have saved you? Would it have saved you if you knew that we’d cry multiple times a day because these thoughts circle our mind: we should have done more, we should have done less, I should have said this, if I didn’t do that, or go there, or leave home… Would it have helped you stay if you knew we’d be writing letters but keeping them in a folder, writing emails and sending them to ourselves, uploading recordings of your voice on Spotify so that we’d constantly be able to hear your voice as we go about our day, revisiting photos daily, writing this blog? Would it have made a difference if I had told you how big of an impact your absence would make on all of us… even the people we never thought we were close to? I wish you were somehow able to know how much we’d miss you, how much your absence would be felt, maybe that could have helped you stay? Maybe if you had known just how much we needed your presence, it would have helped you get through another day.

Ultimately, I know it wasn’t your choice. Death knocked on your door that day, and you were far too tired to leave it unanswered. I read somewhere that having a mental illness is like getting attacked from inside out. Sometimes the person getting attacked doesn’t realize that they’re being taken over until the taking over happens, and then it’s too late. I believe that every person who has lost their battle against mental illness, didn’t make that choice. No one would choose to cause hurt to their family and friends knowing that they are surrounded with love and people who would do anything to help them. I wish the storm you were in had paused just long enough for you to catch your breath. But then again, the storm shouldn’t have forced you in in the first place. Mental illness doesn’t play fair – it clouds judgement, silences hope, and isolates you in a room with a locked door and no key. We were right outside the door, hearing you scream, and screaming with you because we had no way of getting you out.

You fought harder and longer than anyone, and you will always be the bravest and strongest person I know. You are not to blame for what happened. We now carry with us the love that overflowed from you then – and still does now.

Can’t wait to see you again and continue the happy life we were meant to live. I love you more, always, and forever.

Love always,
Sha