I have survived several depressions that involved serious contemplation of suicide. This last year, we saved my husband (who is bi-polar) from carrying out a plan to kill himself by taking him the the ER two days - we later found out - from when he would have made the attempt. Living in any family where there is illness brings with it a certain amount of anger, chimerical in its ability to be suppressed when necessary and re-emerge in often-unrecognizable forms when life starts to get safer again . It glints on the sharper edge of kindness and settles like a fog over the resentments and petty disagreements of daily life. My goal is not to have a relationship that is anger-free so soon after such a trauma; only to keep offering to it what I can of myself and to take my joy from the fact that my family is together, however broken, and will continue to be.

That being said, my experiences with suicide did not revolve around resentment or recrimination (of self or others), only sadness over my own sense of dissolution. As my body became less and less able to function in day-to-day life, my world became more restricted, more solipsistic, more intensely lonely. I was aware at every stage that this was primarily a physical cause. I was less engaged in the cognitive distortions that we often associate with depression than I was simply out of the energy required to walk across a room, stay awake for more than three hours, concentrate on planing and carrying through a task, think through complex ideas, or take the requisite step back to be able to process and avoid being overcome by emotions. The thoughts of suicide came when the inertia of dissolution overwhelmed any energy I had remaining to push back.

When you are physically incapable of experiencing joy, it makes sense to contemplate ending such a life. When you have to try treatment after treatment after treatment to find the unique combination of Rx and therapy that works right for you (a process that can take many months), it is hard to stay hopeful. You don't even really have much energy to feel hopeful. It takes a saint to endure that, indefinitely, for the sake of others, so a lot of us non-saints think about how to go about not enduring it any more.

I've found most of the blame/anger etc. comes as a result of the illness, not as its cause. The social stigma makes it difficult to share oneself with others or to make necessary arrangements to support recovery. The financial burden is sometimes overwhelming (for example, in the backwards world of a profit-based healthcare system, my husband can't get health insurance due to having been hospitalized for his disorder, a sure way to guarantee more hospitalizations down the road). But this is a different type of anger -- an anger at systems, rather than individuals -- which is more activating and positive than destructive to the self.

The best attitude that I have found to deal with my own periods of depression is twofold. One - I'm very careful to correct any "why me" impulses with a "why not me," objective perspective wherein I recognize how many other people are also suffering as I am, and as my family is, and how there is a system that fails us and that only we can fix. That's my tiny spark of hope in solidarity. Two - as a book on Zen and poetry once taught me, it's okay to set the standard for your life that you have done what you came here to do by showing up with good intentions and being there with all of your limitations and faults. If you are showing up, day after day, doing what you can even if the most you can accomplish that day is to get dressed, or wash a dish, or just stay alive one more day, you are acting against that inertia. It's the only response I can think of to the existential truths of loneliness and powerlessness -- since so much is out of my hands, I will take my joy and my meaning from whatever small thing I can accomplish within my very limited capacities, and whatever fleeting sense of togetherness that this life affords me.

Stalinist? HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!