By now, many, if not all of you, have read about, heard about and talked about the deaths of designer Kate Spade and chef/adventurer/humanitarian extraordinaire Anthony Bourdain. Both were shocking, but none more so to the world than the latter.
As the world grappled to find an explanation as to why two people who were at the top of their respective games and had fame, fortune and influence to boot would end their lives, those of us who’ve actually contemplated taking our own knew the answer: They were simply done.
Both Spade and Bourdain found success bucking the norms. In a sea of sameness when it came to handbags and accessories, the “kate spade” brand was a quirky and colorful breath of fresh air, and her personality was equally as such. For Bourdain, he literally pulled up the rug and exposed all the unsavory critters that embodied the restaurant industry, while still maintaining his passion for good food and the importance of the industry as a whole. He then bolstered his newfound notoriety into an enviable career where he traveled the world, told the stories of its people, and found community and unity in the sharing of a meal. For those of us who still haven’t managed to live following our passions, this would seem like the dream.
But there’s a price for that life, and every day, more and more people who seemingly “have it all” have been paying it.
They call it “mental health issues,” but what it really is is a lack of self care. It’s the instinct of wanting to make sure everyone else is taken care of around you, and that everyone’s needs are being served, while ignoring your own. It’s keeping up appearances so people “don’t think of you as a burden.” It’s empowering others while secretly believing you have no power. It’s listening to assholes who mock people for oversharing on social media, and then wonder why they were the last to know when someone close to them has a breakdown. It’s not acknowledging your self worth.
It’s prioritizing everything else above being authentic with yourself, listening to your heart and body, and having the courage and good sense to walk away from the noise and take a day, a week, or even a month to devote to what makes you whole. It’s pride. It’s shame. It’s anxiety. It’s isolation. It’s denial. It’s reckless.
And, to quote Linkin’ Park’s Chester Bennington (another famous person who succumbed to suicide), “in the end…it doesn’t even matter.”
Because people will pontificate about what could possibly be so bad about life where you give up on it. There’ll be think pieces and statuses posting the suicide hotline aplenty. But unless those people have genuinely shown an interest in something beyond the glitz and glamour of your exterior life, they’re kinda feeding into the reason it’s become moot. While we are ultimately responsible for our life choices, being surrounded by people who only respond to you when you do something they find appeasing is a shitty way to live.
That’s why I value the small number of women in my life who I can reach out to when things get heavy (and right now, things are heavier than a cargo ship carrying automobiles on concrete slabs). Even though we are all currently embroiled in some form of unpleasantness in our lives, we know the best way to cope and/or get through it is to reach out and have that network of folks who check in, listen to us and call us on our shit when we fall into the default response of “everything’s fine.” Because we all are acutely aware of how freeing vulnerability is, and yet we still struggle to be just that because we were taught to be “strong.”
That’s also why I’m suspect of people who mostly post “hot selfies,” and travel pics talking about how great life is. They aren’t real. That’s also why I’m never surprised when a story about an Instagram influencer or some social media personality that made heaps of money getting graft while promoting perfection, ends up having a spectacular meltdown and revealing how they were “living a lie.” That’s also why I really don’t fuck with people who only comment on my throwback pics and/or semi-glamour shots, and stay radio silent when I speak on subjects like traumas, injustice and how the current political climate feeds into them.
A few weeks ago, there was another suicide that had made the news, and it was too close for comfort. A woman leaped from the balcony of a hotel, carrying her 7 year-old son in tow. As I read the story, it occurred to me that the woman was the ex-wife of my former chiropractor, and the child was his son. My immediate response was shock, anger and heartbreak because there was a child’s life taken involuntarily. But it became clearer that the man I’d found to be extremely pleasant and doting on his wife and child (at the time) as he adjusted my spine, may have had some demons of his own for this woman to see no other option than to end their lives.
I’ve said all this to say that society gets so caught up in the presentation that they miss the work that goes into the final product. We see ducks and swans floating gracefully on the water while they furiously paddle underneath and out of sight. We see pristine works of art in museums and galleries, unaware of the chaos of an artist’s studio (and perhaps even more so in their heads). We celebrate a culture where people get famous for sharing glamorous, opulent illusions of perfection, while shunning those who show the gritty and not-so-aesthetically pleasing parts. We prefer pageantry over process.
This is why Bourdain’s death was so hard to grasp; he showed us both the beauty and the grit of this world, and he called bullshit on those who only wanted to keep the ruse going for their personal gains. Sadly, those people far outnumbered people like him.
In the end…that matters.
Blountly Speaking 