Like Robin

I have been falling a while. Or floating. The words all feel pretty minced, lately; I could say whatever and it might mean whatever.

I guess I want to say I’m sorry.

I sent up a flare earlier. I can’t say it was a cry for help exactly. I’m not precisely drowning, or starving, or dying in any acute way. I feel fundamentally unsafe, uncomfortable, and near death regardless. This isn’t new for me, and I’ve been trying to be more vocal about it. It’s already begun, and I imagine it will continue — people do want to help. I am loved, and love isn’t magic.

And I always end up wanting to say I’m sorry. Because love isn’t magic, and I don’t like reminding people of that. I don’t like putting my troubles in others’ faces. Not because I’m ashamed but because I feel like they’re powerless, too. There’s projection; I feel powerless against the most consumptive aspects of my depression. Truly, someone else might have tools or means to help me. I’m content to be wrong, and I’m also exhausted. I don’t feel like I have the energy to sort through the love to find whatever I might actually use.

Again, I feel I should apologize.

Because I don’t like feeling transactional and pragmatic about others’ love in these moments when I might be urgent. I do know I’m loved. I love you, too.

I love making you laugh. I love talking about you, and me, and us in the depth I think we deserve. I love showing you pieces of the world, with all the vibrancy I can bring from the brink of this abyss. I do feel at the precipice of an abyss. And so I feel like Robin.

Williams.

When he killed himself; I was terrified. I was worried people would find me out, and I was not ready to have a public conversation about my mentality and suicidal ideation. It did feel like people were taken aback. Robin Williams was such a nexus of joy for so many. Even in his more serious roles, he brought a core of mirth and liveliness that felt wholly enchanting. The immediate words felt like disbelief — how could someone so funny and light willfully extinguish themself?

This is how.

I just feel done. I honestly feel a little overdone. Like I’ve risked ruining the painting by adding a few final details.

I’ve reached for so many things in my life. I’ve dreamed and dabbled across my whims. I’ve loved and hurt — deeply and often — and I have very few regrets. I can’t imagine what more might come for me if I hold on indefinitely. I do want for things, but they are beyond my control or ability to realize. It’s not that I feel them completely out of reach. It’s an admittance that I can’t do them alone, and perhaps a defeatist stance that even together they won’t be realized in whatever time I “naturally” have left.

So I just feel done. What more could I ask for? With more money, I’d just fuel other artists. I barely maintain the network I have as is, and I don’t think I really have capacity to expand it while indulging the nodes with my full self. I can’t claim I feel spiritually at peace; I often feel a sense of helplessness and internal turmoil that I can never be enough for myself or others. I’ve at least grown to acknowledge that voice, and ignore its severity. I am as I am, and it’s enough because that’s what it is.

I haven’t hit the world like Robin did. I’m not a celebrity. I do live to make people laugh, and feel themselves.

At some point Robin was done, too. It was a tragedy.

It is a tragedy. It doesn’t change.

I’m sorry. It’s a tragedy.

It doesn’t change.

At least it was lovely, too.