Robin Williams
I usually post my daily Sundrops here for you and on Facebook for others to read. Today I will post only here, for you. I want you to know something about me and something about Robin Williams. I first met Robin in 1979 in a nightclub I was managing. It was called Xenon and it was in NYC. Robin and I hit it off right away and we laughed at each others jokes and shenanigans until many a dawn. He was the funniest person I had ever met. Often I would have to feign a bathroom break or just walk away from him so that I could massage my jaw muscles that actually ached from laughing so hard and so long. He would meet me at the club towards the end of the night or we would hang out in the vip rooms of various after hours clubs where it mattered that you were special but conversely nobody really cared. Robin was always “on”. He would only rarely ever turn it off. One night in the vip lounge of a club called Crisco Disco, we started to talk about death. There were a few jokes but when I confided to my friend that I had attempted suicide several times when I was younger, he became serious for a moment. He said that he totally understood and that there were times when the depression was so overwhelming that “you just felt like you were being dragged into a shredder and it was better to take your life than to endure the pain that you knew was coming”. I stared at him after he said it and I thought to myself “He gets it”. He was one of the only people I knew at that time who understood. Our relationship went to another level that night. We remained friends for a while until business, life and his divorce and his work separated us.
I don’t tell you this just to say I knew Robin but to tell you about the depression we shared. I have read so much about how all his money and fame couldn’t save him. How it would have been different if he knew how much he was loved. How it would have had a different outcome if he had someone to talk to. NO! Robin said that it was like being dragged into a shredder and he was right. When you are being dragged into the dark bowels of a shredder you don’t think about what you have or who loves you. It doesn’t matter if someone is there to talk to you or to listen to you. All you want at that moment is not to go into the darkness and pain again.
Please understand that suicide is a choice that some people see as their only option. NOTHING matters more than escaping that pain. Robin loved his family more than you could ever imagine. He would never, ever want to see them suffer in any way. The pain on Sunday blinded him to anything but the pain itself and this time, the pain won. If you suffer from depression or if thoughts of suicide repeat in your mind, know that the time to work on it is now and now and now. The shredder will claim others but it doesn’t have to be me or you. We can lean on each other and learn from each other and we can search every single day for those tools that make us stronger. Depending upon our choices of food, sleep, meditation, spirituality, exercise,openness and a myriad of other options, we will live to love another day. I pray that all of us will live many, many happy days and that the shredder one day will cease to claim anyone. May Robin be the last. Love and Blessings, Patrick
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