Robin Williams: a difficult passing

Let me start out by saying that I am bi-polar.  The worst of my depression was coincident with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, which was a whole lot more difficult to overcome.  Still, it is safe to say that I have known some real lows.  

Keeping busy as a writer is important to my mental state, but I wasn’t up to my normal routine this morning. I left the apartment early, but I don’t think I had it in me anyway, the first morning in weeks that I haven’t written.  

That is what the suicide of a great comic actor can do to you.  It hit me pretty hard. I actually think that I adapted more easily to the news that airplanes had just crashed into the Twin Towers.  I shoved that right off and got back to my daily routine, even if the rest of the city was in a state of shock.  

Robin Williams’ precipitous action has, for me, been worse. For one thing, I think the situation is inherently confusing. For someone who sustains himself by remaining resolutely positive, this is a tough one.

I have had sustained suicidal thoughts for years on end, many years on end.  I have known family members who have had it worse.  What I’m trying to get at is that there is an element of fight in all of this, personal resolve, the resolution not to give way, no matter how bad it might be. I don’t really have any idea how bad it was for Robin Williams. Maybe his doctor does. I don’t. My thoughts these past two days have been with the countless thousands who are engaged in that fight right now. There is nothing easy about it, and I fear that Robin Williams’ high profile, tragic death, may make that struggle even more difficult.

Did he know how many people would be affected by his actions? Did he realize the position he held in the American psyche?  Did he give it everything, I mean everything, that he had? I’d like to think that the answer to all of these questions is “yes;” that he really couldn’t take it anymore.  

Ernest Hemingway’s case might have been similar — a well-known artist in the second part of his life who found the depression too much to take.  Rest in peace, Robin Williams. Today, my thoughts are with the thousands struggling with some form of depression who are still here.

Josh Greenfield is a writer who lives in Riverdale.  His most recent book is The Obsessive Chronicles: a novel.