There is a thought that when someone with depression dies by suicide, this is not a solution to the depression. It only continues to spread the depression to everyone who misses them. As the five stages of grief go, depression is my least favorite. It also seems to be one of the sneakiest. It comes along when everything is otherwise going well in life. My life since Kody died has been pretty good overall. It is easy in the happy moments to push the sad ones aside. But there are times, that depression comes creeping back.
I have known depression far more intimately than most as I have seen it in its darkest forms. For some reason, the logical portion of my brain felt that this would prepare me for depression as one of the five stages of grief. Not surprisingly to anyone who has experienced grief like this I am sure, it has not prepared me. I am frequently surprised by the depression parts. I’ve been having really vivid dreams where Kody is there. Not Kody as I knew him, but his true glowing self. He is funnier, brighter, and happy. I know in my dreams I am walking with his soul. We talk about parts of my life, I would have shared with him.
The dreams make waking painful, because when I come back, I return to a world where I he is gone. A lot of depression for me comes in tossing and turning after waking from these dreams. Or sleeping late on weekends because I don’t want to return to a world without him. Its doubly stupid to me because I know that I have access to his soul even in waking moments, but I choose to be more human than that. I choose to grieve him, the physical manifestation of him. The fact that never in my waking life will I hug him or walk beside him. Never will we sit and talk or lay on the carpet talking for hours as we once did.
Depression comes when I cannot escape missing those physical moments. Dreams are a trigger, because in dreams I can do anything. I can show him my new car, I can talk to him about moments he is missing, he is there to share those moments. He isn’t here in any physical way. Knowing that makes me want to lay in silence for hours or blast music just to avoid the silence of a moment. It is at once difficult to sleep and easier to be asleep.
It is no surprise that the depression part of the five stages of grief is the part that makes me the most miserable. This part effects my life the most as I am often exhausted all day from depressive stupors during the night. Or I waste time in my life napping when I ought to get out of bed and seize the day. Where does depression hurt? Everywhere. Who does depression hurt? Everyone. And the same is true when it comes to suicide loss.