Depression
I’ve stayed pretty quiet about our recent loss of Robin Williams. Some of you know that I used to do stand up comedy. Needless to say, this isn’t something I’ve done recently. Robin Williams is one of my personal heroes. I feel the loss of him pretty deeply.
You see, I have bipolar disorder. I also have general anxiety disorder, and OCD. This was complicated further by my diagnosis of fibromyalgia.
I’ve struggled for several years to get this under control. When I am on stage or in front of a class room I can say things that I can’t say one on one.
I know it sounds funny, but I’m EXTREMELY introverted. So was Robin Williams. That’s why you’d never see an interview where he’d give personal information. Instead he’d go into one of his crazy characters.
When Corey was murdered, I was on maintenance for my illness… and please keep in mind, it IS an illness. When he died, it threw me into a pit of depression so deep I cannot explain. The medications no longer helped…
If you can imagine grief under a magnifying glass making it larger than life itself… and then the sun shining through the magnifying glass setting the grief on fire… That’s grief with the added illness of bipolar disorder, general anxiety disorder, OCD, and fibromyalgia all rolled into one.
I had to go back to the doctor’s and start new medications and find a new normal. I am now maintaining.
As you read about Robin, please keep in mind that he was suffering from a real disease. Like diabetes, or kidney disease. He needed medication to control it. He suffered. He had to adjust for it every time something changed in his life. Whether it was his diet, his medications, his sleeping habits, or his counselor. Its just been stated that he also had Parkinson’s. That’s a shock… an adjustment. One more thing he had to deal with.
And just like someone dying of diabetes or kidney disease, people can die of mental illness.
Robin Williams is still my hero. He held on as long as he could. May he rest in peace.
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