I don’t spend a whole lot of time on Facebook anymore. It used to be a fun avenue for humorous quips about life with inquisitive children—and I miss that—but I found myself getting sucked into rabbit holes that made me doubt every choice I’d ever made, especially when it came to parenting, so I quit. Now I only go on when I get an email telling me someone’s sent a message, which is rare.
One of these notes appeared in my inbox last fall, so I dutifully logged on to see what was up. The first post in my feed caught my eye. A former colleague wrote something about one of my journalistic mentors, a man with a deep-dwelling soul such as my own. I knew it was headed nowhere good. By the end, I felt like someone had a vice grip on my throat.
Michael’s reports were more than just information, they were an invitation. They put you right in the city, the room, the minds of everyone involved, like a trip through a wardrobe into to a different world. He put his everything into his words and told me once he heard the same in mine.
It was a brief comment that was desperately needed at the time, one that I still revisit in times of faltering faith. I took it as a sign that, no matter what others said, there was someone out there who appreciated my approach. I once had an editor say in frustration as the deadline loomed, “It doesn’t need to be art, Alison, it just has to be here.” Michael understood there was no separating the two.
This was all a lifetime ago. I thought of him off and on over the years, yearning to reconnect to tell him how much I valued his words, his mind, himself as person. In September, I finally asked someone where he was. His phone number and email in hand, I did absolutely nothing. Two months later, he took his own life.
I struggle to understand how someone who was admired so deeply could feel such a lack of hope or doubt their belonging in the world. It rips me apart. What’s worse—and you knew this was coming—was the opportunity I squandered to tell him everything I’d been holding onto for a decade. It’s only natural to question whether this one small act could have made a difference. I will carry that the rest of my days.
Anxiety is said to be the disorder of future fear and what ifs. What if I fall on the ski hill? What if the plane crashes? What if they choke on a chip while I’m upstairs folding laundry? From my understanding, you’re supposed to go through the process of answering those what ifs in order to get past the worry. I’ve never found this to be helpful, considering the answer to all my what ifs tends to be death, or something close to it. With Michael, all my what ifs come to the exact opposite conclusion.
Michael came across as strong, confident, and wildly intelligent, with no room for bullshit. If he spent time pondering anything, I assumed it was politics or injustice or the best way to tell a story about the marriage between the two. Unbeknownst to many, he had an entirely different script running through his mind, and it wasn’t one of hope.
It took until after having kids for me to realize the things I’d been experiencing all my life were actually anxiety. I can think back now and remember having minor panic attacks. I didn’t know what they were at the time. I thought it was a blood sugar thing. Even my grade-school principal called me a Worry Wart.
But, because I’m not crunched up in the fetal position biting my nails off, I never really identified it as anxiety. Instead, I’m doing things like telling my husband not to amalgamate the vitamin C bottles in case one gets recalled and we need the serial number. You remember the last vitamin C recall, don’t you? No? Exactly.
I am high-functioning, poker-faced, and cool-as-a-cucumber yet every night before bed I make sure the stove is off, there’s a clear path to the exits and that the children are still breathing. Medication didn’t help—I’m scared of drugs—but therapy does. So does exercise, nature, eating well, and sleep, something I’m not getting much of these days. Friends are essential, but they need to be real and you need to be okay with them telling you to chill the eff out.
The goal of Let’s Talk Day is to normalize mental health issues, to the point where saying you have anxiety or depression or anything in-between is on par with saying you have Diabetes or MS. It would illicit concern and compassion, not fear and judgement. Who’s to say whether stigma prevented Michael from reaching out. Sometimes when you’re so far in it, you can only see one way forward. But for any of you walking a similar path, please know you are loved, you belong and you are understood.