Depression, Suicide and living on the edge – Letter to a Stranger in the Dark
 Someone wrote to me from out of the ether after getting my CD. It was a beautiful letter about feeling found through having connected with the songs but also the most tangible aloneness as though they were calling from the darkness somewhere. People forget that I too am a stranger and that a stranger has somehow touched them or helped them feel a bit ‘found’. But on reflection what I wrote was something that would apply to so many out there, even had I written it to myself 15 years ago as a voice from the future to my own past. So here I felt to share it with you….
You know, the reason for your life is simple that you ARE.
You don’t have to be here for a reason, you just ARE here.
There was no reason for mine. I didn’t think ahead or plan any of where I am, I just arrive. I certainly drifted anonymously for years and years. None of it wasted.
The ultimate audience to be known by is oneself. You have that. You exist. You have made your mark. You are as real as any strong tree you can see from your window, who also finds no reason and simply IS. I too am such a tree and the fact the world knows of me is mere details.
If all looks dark, some omega 3 fish oils wouldn’t do any harm either! They are a mood leveller around 2000mgs a day for those of you really so lost you are in danger and too scared to see a GP or shrink. Sometimes you’ve got to face that you need some help with your chemistry too.
Now if you have journied to the dark and danced with it too long. It’s time to voyage into the discovery of every tiny piece of light within you and around you in the simplest of things. When you get close, even a grain of sand is a world. If we have been getting closeups of the darkness we need to balance this with seeking closeups of what is also our light.
As a stranger here in my own private space, I believe in you and your life.
Warmly,
Donna Williams, familiar stranger.
ps: I expect however crazy those around you may see you as being, you are not them, they are not you… and ‘craziness’, whatever its label or name, even if you have it, is simply part of life’s diversity and it may be ‘different’ but it is still equal. Don’t forget that.
Donna Williams
Hello, I’m mother to a son diagnosed ASD. I read all of your books that I could find when my son was first diagnosed. Reading them was extremely helpful. I related to some of what you wrote, but not all. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, feelings and sensations.
I wish you joy.
I’m glad the books were helpful
🙂
You read all 9?
there are 4 in the autobiographical series
1 poetry and prose
4 text/social philosophy books.
(and now I’m writing films).
Donna,
I have been reading your book Nobody, Nowhere. My Brother is autistic and though we grew up together he is many miles away and I have no real contact with him until I talk on the phone. It is very difficult for him to
hold a conversation espessially on the phone. I miss him and Love him and want to move him closer to me, though I am afraid he may be upset
If i break his routine. My hope is to show him a whole new world of things and offer school, such as piano lessons and whatever else he would like to
take. Many ways you described your self and I felt Daniel(my Brother) Might have felt the same way but only he knows how he felt growing up.
The key point here is that reading your life is a miracle because I am seeing words with emotion that describe your life as a person and that helps me relate to Daniel even better.
Hi Sarah,
Oh, I know the phone thing. Its so hard to connect with the personhood of the one at the other end when you can’t see their movements in space, see their psychical existance in relation to oneself, as more than just sound in an ear, as someone with whom one has ‘doing’ not just ‘telling’. And then if one is ‘cat’, not ‘dog’ then even in person one needs to see the other person ‘being, within their own space’ more than seeming to ‘pursue’ them, however kindly and with all the best of intentions.
I always connected well via objects that represent the physical person and these can travel through space – in the post.
I’m glad you love your brother and I understand your caring and ‘missing’ as I have a younger brother and I’m the lucky one, I may have built my own life, but I have a surival and optimist nature to make the best of anything and we’re not all so lucky to have this.
What matters is that he knows that if he reaches a cross roads, that the choice to join you is there. But if he’s a self owning ‘cat-person’ then watch the spotlights aren’t too bright, the waiting, wanting, not too obvious as cats are masterful at avoiding the enthusiasm of others.
I’m very vigilant which makes me very fly on the wall, self protective, insistant on autonomy and to never ask for help. I avoid those who want to help because fear of entanglement haunts me and intimacy is something I can stand in small, escapable doses.
Some find it easy to love us ‘cats’ but so hard to have us grab for the expression of that love. The cat never watches, waits or wants, this is what the ‘dog-people’ do. The cat just ‘is’. So many warm hearted people have such desire to give but only when there is nothing on offer do some cats ask what you’ve got.
Exposure Anxiety is a strange beast.
🙂 Donna *)
Nice Blog. I have been looking for blogs and such that I can relate to. I invite you to come to my blog and join me in my delightful spiral into death depression and nothing.
Thanks for your time. Remain happy ?
Visited your blog.
You have great humour.
Yes, OCD is an insidious beast
sometimes I want to cut my head off too
its recent one is that I can’t put anything down that’s wrong side up or upside down or people will die (or I will… its usually 50-50).
ha, is that all.
but even though I know it’s insanity and know complying with its bullying evil lies will only feed this ‘pusher’, about 30% of the time I weaken and do what it compels me… I just can’t bear the thought of death on my hands.
OCD is a pusher.
it brought its drug to me when I was 9
and ate most of my life by age 11
I took my life back
and we’ve danced ever since
mostly it only gets a few steps out of me before I smell it out and change the record
medication which has reduced bipolar, tics and Exposure Anxiety has kicked it’s butt
and self calming keeps it relatively powerless
still, annoying flea that it is.
And I do hope you don’t do anything so boring as die.
.. Donna *)