It has been a very long time since I have written… I know. Last I wrote, I was in the meltdown of turning 40 years old and everything in my life falling apart. It has been a long journey for me since then full of a range of emotions and experiences. It feels like forever and no time all at the same time.
I don’t have any big reveals or answers, but I have reached a place of feeling more at peace with my life. I still have some sadness that comes through all of a sudden catching me by surprise sometimes. But it’s not the overwhelming grief that I was feeling.
So why am I writing now? Nothing big, nothing new, nothing revealing… because I have been feeling extra sensitive lately. I have been laughing at myself too—how I am SUCH a romantic unromantic person. What? Yeah. I am this push and pull of being totally romantic and sensitive about so many things… a piece of me longs for fairy tales to be real (I mean let’s be honest, I LIVED in a tree!) And at the same exact time, I am cynical, want nothing to do with long-term anything, I get sad a lot, I struggle with depression, and I am unbelievably, ridiculously, overly sensitive.
I have done so much work on myself. But at the end of the day, I am such a mess on so many levels.
And this leads me around to why I am writing now. Recently, on August 11th, comedian, actor, father, and advocate Robin Williams took his own life. Yes, this happened in the midst of incredible violence and sadness all over the world with people dying everywhere—innocent people. So why did his death impact so many of us? Especially since he took his own life, and it was not like he was an innocent person murdered by military or police?
I will not speak for others, but for myself, his suicide impacted me for a few different reasons. As many people know, I have struggled not only with depression my whole life, but I have also attempted suicide and have come close to trying again many times. I know what it is for people to look at me in one way, and for me to feel totally and completely different inside than how I am perceived. I know what it is to, at one moment, feel so happy and full of life, and the next moment, so full of deep, deep grief and despair. I know what it is to be an addict in order to self-medicate because of how overwhelming it is to be so sensitive in such an intense world. I know what it is to feel pressured by people’s love, expectations, and projections. It can feel like a bar that cannot be reached and a weight that cannot be carried.
So, without saying my experience is exactly like Robin William’s, I felt myself deeply in his death. When I heard he had committed suicide, I reflected back to a very brief experience and interaction I had with him. I had been around him twice, but the first time I met him stayed in my mind. I was going onto a TV set for an interview as he was leaving it. Our interaction was brief, but in that moment, by his comment to me, I felt how deeply sensitive he was.
I am not sure what it is that has some of us be so sensitive—feeling everything so very, very deeply. Something happens to some of us, and the filter for surviving in this world, seems to break, or at the very least, get holes in it. Everything comes rushing in on us and we start to feel like we are drowning—in grief, anger, and despair.
I cried when I heard Robin Williams died from suicide. I cried for many reasons. But in part, I cried because he had made so many of us happy, had moved so many of us on such deep levels, but somehow, for whatever his reasons were, he had enough. He ended his own life versus continuing the painful struggle of trying to keep his own head above water while drowning in the intensity and overwhelm of our world and living. I cried for him because I was also crying for myself and all the countless others struggling with being so sensitive in such a violent and insensitive world.
I have no answers for any of it. But what I will say (and I know a lot of people strongly disagree with me on this one) is that true love means allowing people their own journey and their right to end it if they want. So in my deep heartfelt gratitude for the ways Robin Williams touched and moved my heart, I send him all my love and wish him the peace he was not able to find here. And I send out my prayers for all of us overly sensitive beings that somehow we find a way to navigate this painful world without taking all of that pain on into ourselves. I have not yet figured out how to do that. I am still a messy work in progress—even when I feel like I am making no progress at all.
Thank You Robin Williams and all the people who have helped me laugh… and to cry. I have no answers, but in this moment, I feel grateful even in the midst of the violence happening all over the world, and the deep grief I am feeling because of it.
Love,
julia
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