It was a Monday night, 20 years ago this week, and I was really trying to ignore my phone. I had been working long and bizarre hours at two jobs, approaching burnout, and desired nothing more than to be left alone for a while. But the incessant buzz of plastic rattling against the wood of my coffee table did its job, and after a few minutes, I checked. Four missed calls, one of them from someone I hadn’t spoken to in years.

“He’s dead,” I immediately thought.

A returned call confirmed it. My oldest friend, D.C., who I’d known since kindergarten, who was my longtime creative partner and who to this day is still the funniest person I’ve ever known, had taken his own life.

For at least a few years, I had been expecting a call that he accidentally overdosed or wrapped his car around a tree. Not this. It knocked the wind out of me. I had spoken to him on the phone just a few hours earlier.

There were a lot of reasons both D.C. and I had resisted or outright refused help. We were products of our time and upbringing — and boys don’t cry.

He had called me with a manic energy, though he was seemingly happy, at least compared to other recent conversations that could be dark and unpleasant. He was effusively apologetic about some transgressions I no longer considered much of a big deal. I told him I just wanted him to be happy, that I was sick of seeing him destroy himself through addiction and other forms of self-sabotage and that at 27, he had miles of road still available to him, if he’d only accept the help that I and others were offering him.

I wasn’t particularly worried about him at that moment any more than I had been for the past few years. Like the time we were out West to pick up a film festival award for a screenplay we co-wrote, and I awoke to the sounds of him having violent withdrawal seizures on the floor of the hotel room we were sharing. After I slapped some consciousness into him, he absolutely forbade me from calling for help. This was becoming a theme for us.

As our last phone conversation wound down, I playfully insulted him to signal that everything was OK between us, and that I still considered him as close to a brother as a non-blood relation could be. He accepted the intended affection of my good-natured ball-busting, which he could give every bit as good as he could take. We ended the call with a sincere I love you, man sign-off and vague plans to meet up over the holidays. And that was that. I’d never hear his voice again.

I’ll spare you the gory details of the grieving process — the uniquely bewildering and traumatic experience of a suicide funeral, the reckless self-medicating, the monthslong fugue state where life felt joyless and mechanical, a series of rote tasks leading to nothing.

But when the dust had settled and shock had worn off, what I was left with was anger. I had no sympathy, empathy or understanding for my friend. Just rage against someone I believed had selfishly quit or, worse, had committed an unforgivable act of violence on the loved ones who survived him.

For at least a few years, I had been expecting a call that he accidentally overdosed or wrapped his car around a tree. Not this. It knocked the wind out of me.

That is, until I found myself on the edge about a decade later, out of work, with a newborn and two toddlers, and with no hope. I’ve already written about it at length, but life in the morass of depression felt as though I was technically alive but not really living, besieged by physical pain and emotional emptiness, with no purpose. There was a sickness telling me to go — and right now. It couldn’t wait.

I stared down the abyss, but I didn’t jump in. Though I did sufficiently scare the hell out of myself, never before having known what it felt like to not want to live.

I asked for help. By no means did it take right away, and years later, the really bad lows still regularly come in waves. But I found a way to not only survive but also experience profound moments of joy, to be the person my family needs me to be and to commit to living as full a life as I’m able. And the years of anger I’d held against D.C. for the way he left faded into memory. I can just miss him now.

It’s been about another decade since and every day still takes work. But at least I know what to call the malady that I’d lived with my whole life without realizing it had a name: depression.

Twenty years after he left, and 10 years after I decided to stay, I can’t fathom what briefly led me to believe that it would have been better for everyone if I wasn’t around anymore. But I do know it happened. And that knowledge afforded me empathy for D.C.’s struggle that I couldn’t muster in the aftermath of his death. I’ll never accept what he did, but I’ll forever understand how he came to that place.

I stared down the abyss, but I didn’t jump in. Though I did sufficiently scare the hell out of myself, never before having known what it felt like to not want to live.

There were a lot of reasons both D.C. and I had resisted or outright refused help.

Among them were an ingrained macho resistance to the vulnerability necessary in talk therapy, and an equally asinine refusal to consider anti-depressants, which we considered an admission of weakness. We were products of our time and upbringing — and boys don’t cry.

Even with less stigma attached to mental illness these days, there’s still bad faith actors peddling the lie that certain life-saving treatments are worse than the disease. There’s also still people pushing the fiction that admitting to depression is unmasculine and a threat to society. And too many people believe this.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think about what D.C. would have to say about what’s become of the world we once shared. I have little doubt it would be cutting, incisive and hilarious. And I’m glad I can think of him that way, rather than through the cloud of judgment and shame I had lived beneath for too many years.

But what I wish more than anything was that he had accepted help. At least I did.

September is Suicide Prevention Month. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or chat live at 988lifeline.org. You can also visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional support.

The post I lost my best friend to suicide. Then I learned how to survive depression. appeared first on MS NOW.

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