Little Lights

We have this new kid on our team at work. He's quickly become my partner in coffee and crime, my collaborator on work stuff, the person I can talk to when I'm having a stressful day. He's great. 

Y'all know I love to work from home on Fridays, but he was going to the office today and I had a meeting. I signed up to volunteer for a Committee that's organizing our events for mental health week, and I'd already ignored this girl's emails for a week and a half and then cancelled my meeting with her twice. I felt obligated to show up. 

Me: You know what's going to happen. They're going to ask me to tell my story. 

Him: Just go to the meeting Margaux. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. 

So I went. She gave me an overview of the whole project. All the events they have planned. The need for Marketing/Comms support. This is usually where I come in when I sign up for some volunteer activity at KPMG. I get put on the communications tasks, and I have absolutely no issue with that. I love it, after all. 

Their big event, out of all of them that week, is this panel, which apparently over 100 people show up to listen to. Last year they had four people who told their stories about dealing with mental health issues. One Partner talked about his battle with depression and everyone cried. 

Hmmm. Depression is depressing. Who would have thought. 

The co-chair of the Committee talked about all the help they needed, I asked her what was she looking for from me? She said they were looking for a "Champion" of the campaign this year. She thought I'd be good for that. Project Management work, time consuming but I can do that, no problem. Then she said they only wanted two panelists on that event this year, so they can have time for a Q&A. Did I want to tell my story?

Get up in front of over 100 of my colleagues and talk about how I got to the point where I thought it would be a good idea to kill myself. 

My first reaction was basically, are you fucking kidding me? What I said out loud was, can I have the weekend to think about it?

I went home, at this point in the afternoon we were both working from home and I IM'd my little buddy. 

Me: I was right. 

Him: Think about it this way. If you think your story and your experiences can genuinely help those that are in the same situation, consider doing it. If not, that's ok too!

So I thought about it. And he was right. That's the reason I started this blog, that's the reason I told my story to a big old magazine so they could publish it. I do genuinely want to help other people who might feel as desperate as I did. We've all got all these little lights in us, but life, people, bad luck can put them out, one by one, until we feel so dark there's no way back to the sun. 

I felt that way for years, that I would never feel happy, ever again. And it's terrible to feel that way. We can "Pollyanna" it up as much as we can, and we should try to feel positive, but mental health issues: depression, anxiety, etc. are sometimes not by-products of us feeling sorry for ourselves. Sometimes as much as we try, for a period of time, there's no real way out. Yoga, positive thinking and reinforcement, therapy, they help. But it can take a lot of time for the "medication" to kick in. In the meantime, it's just us, battling our dark passenger. 

Me: Ok. I'm going to do it. 

Him: Awesome decision. :)

Me: You'd better start working on a kick-ass pep talk to give me when I'm having a panic attack right before this happens. 

Mental Health is a serious issue. It affects people just as much as a physical disability, or someone who is dying of cancer. Those things are obvious to everyone on the outside, this disease, not so much. People everywhere are suffering from it, and having come out the other side, back into the light, as embarrassing as it is, I want to tell my story so those of you who are dying on the inside right now, know the light comes back. I won't lie, it's slow. Little lights, one at a time. But you can get there. I did. In the meantime, go to yoga.