It's not your fault, it's not your fault, it's not your fault...

No death has surprised me less than the suicide of Robin Williams. I read the news of his death on my Facebook wall via a post from Jared Leto. I found myself calmly going into my dark place, the Daily Mail online to confirm the news and I read without much reaction, that he had apparently killed himself. Asphyxiation - there's not much arguing with asphyxiation is there. I always think that that way of killing yourself is the one that means you bloody well meant to do it.

And then I found myself feeling sadness, numbness: bastard depression.

It hadn't shocked me. I wasn't surprised he had taken his life the way I was when Seymour-Hoffman succumbed to heroin addiction. I'm not sure when I realised Robin Williams was a depressed man. I don't have a moment or a memory. It's almost as if it's just been there, all along. The knowledge that this man battles. I didn't know a lot about his addiction struggles, I'm not even sure I registered it. In fact, the comments on it in amongst his depression are annoying me.

Of course depression and addiction walk hand in hand. But I don't believe addiction killed him, the way it did Seymour-Hoffman. Depression did. One might say they are the same thing and that ultimately depression also killed Seymour-Hoffman. No death is more sad or tragic than another and accidental death is both shocking and horrifying. But planned death, planned death makes me shudder. I find myself inexplicably drawn to people who have killed themselves even before I knew they killed themselves. My chief suicide obsession is Virginia Woolf. Not least because she battled for years before finally giving in to her depression; much like Williams. To have made it to 63 is no mean feat.

I have imagined my own death. I have thought about how I would do it. I have wished to have the strength of mind to do it: strength of mind. What a thing to say. Surely it's a weakness? Believe me, it isn't. Depression can take the mind to some very scary places. In all of this death can be the only comfort. "I could just turn it all off." In my worst moments, I have fantasised about my own death and wished, wished it would turn up. I have driven late at night in floods of tears, barely looking at the road, willing myself to crash the car. I couldn't drive the car into a wall, I couldn't do it, but I wanted a wall to drive into the car.

In more recent years I have cried and screamed and begged myself to find a way to do it.

And then I have searched out treatment. Something, something has kept me alive – but - once you have imagined taking your own life that thought never truly leaves. I have taken time to understand my depression and I have spent two years working very hard to climb out of the pit. I recognise in myself the triggers, the feelings I need to watch more closely. I also recognise that it will come back. There will be other times in my life when depression becomes loud again. And I know that each time, the thought of escape will get closer to reality.

And that's where the obsession comes. I wonder how many fights it will take me before I give in. I have a very real fear that it will be there throughout my life. That it may even eventually take my life.

I hope not. I hope I win the battle. But I can tell you I'm scared of the battle; terrified in fact. The thought of going back to where I was two years ago makes my whole body feel sick.

And so I read stories of people who took their lives, I try and find out how many fights they had with themselves, what made them give in? Surely, if you have gotten out of depression once, you know you can do it again. It doesn't work like that. In fact, each episode feels worse than the last; more despairing, more terrifying, more insurmountable.

Somewhere along the road I had picked up on this battle within Robin Williams. Possibly it was the 'on fire' explosions of personality that he displayed in public. Perhaps it was the subtle, sensitive performance in films like 'Good Will Hunting'. Perhaps it was a combination of them both. Whatever it was, I knew he danced with darkness.

The thing about depression is that it very often looks like happiness.
Before I admitted to my own depression, to anyone but my closest I looked the same as always. I smiled in all the right places, sometimes more, I joked, I worked hard, washed myself. Behind that front my whole self was crumbling like a building collapsing from subsidence. Each day it was becoming harder and harder to hold that face in place as the foundation walls fell away. I couldn't give up work; I had no way to survive without work. So in the end all I did was get myself through work and then I would retreat and collapse at home. Every day became harder and harder. Tasks such as cooking for myself became impossible. Cleaning the flat was unimaginable.

"I'm fine. How are you? Tell me about..."

Bat everything away with a question. The thing I discovered was that we all like talking about ourselves. So if you don't want to answer a question because it is too difficult, then you can not answer it by asking a question. By the time the answer is finished they have forgotten the question. And so you have successfully hidden again.

Robin Williams fought his battle by being really loud. I know others who do this. If you are loud and bubbly and fast and funny, no one will notice what lies underneath. They won't have time. They won't see you. If you drink, you won't see yourself.
This was his pattern. This was his fight. Everything we loved him for was everything he struggled with. Everything I love Virginia Woolf for was everything she struggled with. Wherever there is a shining light, there is a shadow.

And Robin Williams light shone very, very brightly.

It is up to us to see the shadows, to pull them out into the light - to stop them from swallowing the light.


"I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time...you have given me the greatest possible happiness...if anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness...I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been" - Virginia Woolf