When the Funny Man Died.

The movie that inspires me to this day.

     I, like most people my age, grew up watching a funny man on the movie screen and TV. He was beautiful and engaging. He was young at the same time he was old. We watched him as he transformed from an alien, to Peter Pan, to the newly divorced dad losing his kids, and to Mrs.Euphegenia Doubtfire. But what I remember most are his serious faces and even tortured roles like a professor named Sean, to a man, named Chris, who loses his children and himself and goes to Hell and back to find his soul mate, Walter Finch and Sy Parrish.
 
    I never get upset about celebrities passing. It happens to all of us, we are born we live a life and we die, it is the natural order of things. But, when I got the news that Robin Williams passed, it got to me. I don't know if that is because I have loved so many of his movies from his comedic roles to his dramatic ones, or if it is because I found comfort in watching him. What hurt the most was that he did not die from a heart attack or cancer or any other disease like that, but he died from a disease that gets swept under the rug because it is "taboo" to talk about.
 
    Depression is not a joke and it is a disease, and it eats at you just as cancer does, but it does it slowly. I have had my own bouts of depression and post traumatic stress disorder, it is hard to be in control when your mind does not want to cooperate. It is not something that you can "snap out of" Suicide is not a selfish act, it is not an act of ending it because it is too much for you, it is an act because you feel like you have become too much to others around you.

     I guess this hit me hard because of the struggles that I have had in the past, and for the fact that I fight every day to keep the harmful thoughts away. Until you are in the shoes of some one who has these kinds of illnesses do not judge. I hope that with the passing of Robin Williams we all take a look at mental health as a serious issue. I would hope that is one of his greatest legacies.

     If you are sad and need some one to talk to please say some thing to a trusted friend, or even call the suicide prevention line the number is 1-800-273-8255. Please say something, because you are bigger than your worst days. There is always hope.