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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Scott Drone-Silvers. I have acted on stage in several musicals in community theater, including Les Miserables, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share lessons I have learned about hopelessness – and hope.

Today’s Fun Fact: Did you know that the longest literary sentence in English is from Jonathan Coe’s The Rotter’s Club, with a sentence of 13,955 words? The runner up, from James Joyce’s Ulysses, is a bit of a piker at only 4,391 words. And you thought that only politicians could go on that long…

What I Learned Yesterday
In the second act of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton, Alexander and his wife Eliza have to overcome the estrangement of their marriage – and then the death of their 19-year old son in a duel.. The song “It’s Quiet Uptown” expresses their shock, their disbelief, their grief at the tragic loss by saying “There are moments that the words don’t reach, there is suffering too powerful to name… the moments when you’re in so deep, it feels easier to just swim down.”

For those of us whose lives have been touched by depression and suicide, they express the things that we feel very well indeed. Whether you are, like me, someone who suffers from depression or, like me, someone who has lost a friend or a loved one to suicide, there are sometimes just no words that can explain what we are feeling.

I am not going to quote you lots of statistics here – but I want you to know that depression affects an estimated 350 million people globally. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) estimates that 16.1 million adults had at least one major depressive episode last year alone. Last year, suicide was the LEADING cause of death for children aged 10-13. Let that sink in a minute. For some people, depression is a battle fought and won. For many of us, depression is a long-term struggle. And for some, it is a battle fought and lost.

My best man had a little boy named Ben who was a pure joy. He was bright, and cheerful, caring, and motivated – a curious little boy who grew into an inquisitive young man. He was fascinated by space – he went to Space Camp when he was very young, and was determined to be involved in space in some way. He grew up, studied hard, and earned a degree in aerospace and mechanical engineering from a great school. He got his dream job working with NASA right out of college, and rose to a position of responsibility within a few months of getting hired. He was living a dream – unfortunately, he was also living with depression and anxiety that was far worse than any of us knew. Seven years ago, that bright young man who looked like he had everything you could wish for took his own life at the age of 23.

Needless to say, his family and friends were devastated by this event. No one saw it coming – though, people talked and started comparing notes, it became much clearer that Ben had struggling for a while. But none of us put the information together in time to take action. And as many families who have lost loved ones to suicide will tell you, the pain of the loss is bad enough to cope with – but worse is the sense that surely you could have done SOMETHING to help prevent this from happening. There can be guilt, anger, and a sense of personal failure – and sometimes even resentment and anger toward the person who took their life, and what effect that action had on those left behind. In the case of Ben’s family, there was some of all of this – but much good has come of the response, as Ben’s family and friends have held a fundraising event for each of the last 7 years to benefit mental health research and training in a program called Mental Health First Aid. So, out of loss and pain, Ben’s family and friends have tried to create hope and increase awareness of mental health issues. I have an interesting perspective on this, having been on both sides of the issue.

You see, when I was a young man, I tried to take my own life. The details aren’t important; I was in severe emotional distress, and I thought that my life was over. I was too young to have any perspective – fortunately, I was unsuccessful, I got some help, and I got on with life – for a while. But a couple of years later, some of those feeling returned, and I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. What I thought would be a “fix this and move on” experience has turned into a lifetime of struggle with both illnesses, and has brought me into contact with other people dealing in their own way with the same issues. It has been a painful journey as I discovered just how difficult it was to deal with “invisible” illnesses (often called that due to the lack of outward obvious symptoms) and the unkindness of those who still stigmatize mental illness.
I once described to a friend how depression made me feel. It’s like having a black hole that follows you everywhere, and it drains your energy, your hope, your happiness. And you’re always afraid that one day it will be easier to just let it swallow you up – to just swim down, so to speak. But I know that there IS hope, and so I try to get up every day and move forward.
As I have grown older I have met a number of people with stories about struggles with mental health issues – sometimes their own, sometimes family members. Sometimes the stories have a happy ending. Sometimes it is a story of their struggles, the daily victories and defeats that are part of living with mental illness. And sometimes, the stories break your heart, like Ben’s. I have talked with the families of those who lost their struggle, and I wish I could give them answers that helped them cope with the loss, to understand why their loved one couldn’t hang on. Mostly, I try to reassure them that what happened was not their fault, and to listen to their stories. And to let them know someone cares.

There are many different groups that try to address mental health issues, and I don’t intend to endorse only one. But I do want to mention one whose message speaks to me. The Semicolon Project’s website proclaims that “a semicolon is used when an author could have ended a sentence but chose not to. You are the author and the sentence is your life”. And the message to all of us is that your story is not over.

Here’s What I Learned
I suffer from chronic depression, panic attacks, and I am pretty open about my struggles, as anyone who visits my Facebook page can attest. I choose to be open about this to educate others, to encourage those who face mental health issues themselves or who know family or friends that do to seek help, and to let others know that you they (or you) CAN live with this. There should be no shame in mental illness, and the sooner that we can accept this and concentrate on finding answers and treatments, the better off we all will be. I will lose some daily battles, and I accept that I will have bad days as well as good ones. But I won’t give in to this. I will not give up. My story is not over.

And if telling my story can convince just one person out there who is struggling with mental health issues to find the help they need, or for one friend or family member to reach out to someone one who needs support and care, then I will feel like whatever sacrifices I make are worth it. None of us could save Ben, but we all can try to do whatever we can to help the Bens of the world know that they are not alone, and that their story is not over, either.

I’m Scott Drone-Silvers, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.

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