Since Robin Williams died on Monday I have written and scrapped three separate pieces inspired by his death. None of them quite felt right. Everything felt a bit forced.

Here’s what I know for sure:

• Robin Williams died of depression.
• Depression is an illness that is often misunderstood and treated as a choice or failing on the part of the afflicted party.
• As such it is a topic that is very dear to me, a topic that I have been researching and writing about, a topic which I plan to do great work on.
• I have come up against some opposition recently, some suggestion that maybe I shouldn’t be talking about this topic and it has had me frozen in place for a while now.

So, why do I talk about depression?

I have been battling depression actively for over a decade and, knowing what I know now, it has been a presence in my life for much longer. It has affected my relationships and sex life and, as I am prone to do, I have passed the wisdom of my experience on to you. As I did that I started to notice something. Every time I talked about depression, even if I was just sharing someone else’s writing or posting a tweet I would get hit with a deluge of emails, DMs and Facebook messages the gist of which were “Hey, me too. Thank you for talking about this”. The more I looked around the more I saw the massive gaps in what we were and were not talking about (ahem, “sexual side effects”). I noticed the number of messages I got from people who felt panicked because no one seemed to understand the things they were talking about – no one wanted to listen. People kept telling the “well, isn’t your health more important?” while they suffering through the loss of their sexuality and, in turn, more depression.

This is why I talk about depression. I talk about it because there are spaces where other people won’t. I talk about it because there are things people aren’t being told by anyone else (I have no idea why). I talk about it because I created this site to be of service to people and this is what people are asking me for.

So, what comes next?

Well, I haven’t been so sure and then Mr. Williams passed away and depression was thrust into the national spotlight. Suddenly mainstream media is actually talking about it. En masse, it’s kind of incredible. The long-held notion that suicide is “selfish” is being publicly challenged. Depression is being recognized as an illness “as bad as cancer and as stealthy“I think people are finally ready to have these conversations for real.

And I’m ready to be a part of them.

So, I’ll be here, doing what I’ve done from the beginning- learning everything I can and sharing everything I learn. I’m not sure what form my own path is going to take coming up  but I think there will be a lot of exciting stuff both in terms of content for you and changes for me.

Depression matters and we are ready for these conversations.

Let’s do this.

 

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