Goodnight, my love. Goodnight, goodnight.

A retrospective on mental health and its impact on the death of Robin Williams

I’ve always worn my emotions on my sleeve, but never as a cry for attention or a plea for help. In the throes of depression, everything is heightened. Swallowing your feelings to hide them from the world is too cumbersome and I have a very low tolerance for masquerades.

Some people are really good at this. They compartmentalize their inner and outer selves, dissociating emotion from appearance. They seem fine, or even buoyant to the outside world.

Robin Williams was one of those people.

His dramatic roles showed such depth, such range. The coked-out, rambling comic mask was removed and his true self emerged. His pain was there, hidden in plain sight and disguised as performance. It would be brilliant if it were not so goddamned sad.

The dichotomies were stark: true sadness masked by superficial happiness; the imprisonment of the mind nodded at with a familiar expression. The smiles and sad eyes were so tangible. The beauty and horror of it all was so overwhelming.

I often think of Williams and can see his dramatic-movie-scene face clear as day. It’s the best embodiment of mental health struggles I’ve ever seen, though I’d bet it’s commonly missed.

Go back and watch the films, especially the quietest parts. Seek out the sadness and pause before the camera cuts away. All the complexity and layered emotion will be right there in all the tiny muscular and epidermal contortions. Oscar-worthy performances that belied the depression and addiction that plagued him.

In the end, the truth came out. It always does.

Williams had been diagnosed with dementia, first in the form of Parkinson’s, then later corrected to Lewy Body Dementia (LBD). His wife, Susan Williams, said it was the reason he took his life. She was the last person to ever hear his voice.

Goodnight, my love. Goodnight, goodnight.

She got to say goodnight, but not goodbye. When she left the house the next morning, she had no idea that he had already taken his life in a nearby room.

Williams was found in an empty bedroom with two antidepressants (Mirtazapine and Seroquel) nearby. There was no sign of overdose, but both medications can increase suicidal ideation. While it is pure speculation, I don’t think the medications played much of a role, if any.

To me, it doesn’t add up.

Williams didn’t try to overdose on the drugs. This was not a statement about his depression or his chemical dependencies. He had a pocketknife and shallow cuts on the inside of his left wrist, but he could not go through with that particular action. Ultimately, he hung himself. To me, that says there was no intention of pain, hate, or anger in his action. He was not trying to harm himself. It was a heartbreakingly selfless suicide. I’ve felt it before.

There were times when I felt I was too much of a burden on loved ones, and other times when I worried I might eventually become one. Suicidal ideation surfaced at these times.

Your loved ones are better off without you. Their quality of life will be better without the weight of your struggle on their shoulders.

That is what you think, anyway.

This is called depressive realism, the theory that people with mild-to-moderate depression are more attuned to reality. At the time of his death, Williams was likely closer to an emotional baseline than in other periods of his life. His medications mellowed things out, as did his sobriety. The highs and lows thinned and contracted. Sadly, that put him right in depressive realism’s crosshairs.

So when his wife said his dementia took his life — not his depression — I believed her, but only because he was depressed. Parkinson’s takes a significant toll on caregivers and LBD is considered worse. I believe Williams knew that and wanted to prevent it.

My sociology professor once said that nobody understands reality quite as well as a depressed person. Good or bad, that always stayed with me. It also scared the hell out of me. It still does because, if it’s true, then there’s something hauntingly lonely about clarity. Seeing the world without illusion or buffer is a cold and cavernous place. A total mindfuck.

Go back and watch Awakenings, or Dead Poet’s Society. You’ll see Robin Williams’ pathos. You’ll see all of the emotions he evokes in one fleeting glance before the camera cuts away. Though he couldn’t control his own mind, he understood the reality of the world.

In the end, he understood what was happening to him. He understood what it’d mean for the people he loved. He weighed the burden of his death against the burden of his decline and chose to carry the heavier one himself.

It’s a choice no one should ever have had to make.