"Of course it is happening inside your head, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?"

I've been mostly avoiding the internet since last night, and I'll probably continue to do so for at least the next few days, given that basically everything online right now comes with a giant trigger warning for depression and suicide—doubly so if you are a humorist dealing with either of these issues. To compound all that, I stupidly let my meds lapse last week, so I missed taking them for several days, and I haven't quite gotten back on track again. And so it's really not good for me to be writing about this right now, but it's also very important to me, so I want to share some things that other people have written, and to remind you that depression lies. It does it very convincingly sometimes, but it still lies.

If you're considering suicide, or you know someone who is, please, please call a suicide hotline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines. It's free. They've been in your shoes, and they listen.

The Bloggess has written a number of posts about depression: http://thebloggess.com/?s=depression+lies. "Strange and Beautiful" has a lot of tricks that can help. You can print a "Depression Lies" bracelet for free from the post with that title (also, there's a video). I made one about 2 1/2 years ago. I still have it. (I found it again this morning.)

Allie Brosh (Hyperbole and a Half) has written a couple of posts about her struggle: Adventures In Depression, Part 1 / Part 2. Some psychologists have actually described it as one of the best contemporary portraits of depression, so if you're not suffering from it yourself, but you know someone who is, and you want to understand what they're going through a little bit better, you should also read it.

Boggle the Owl is also helpful.

Please, if you need to, talk. If someone needs you, listen. Remember, we're all in this together.

This is why we can't have nice things. (Spoiler Alert: My wife is pretty much the most awesome person ever.)

Last year, I took my wife to New Mexico for her birthday. It was awesome, and you should be like nine kinds of jealous. On the last day we were there, we went to the Rattlesnake Museum in Albuquerque.

Look how cute she is! I am also in this picture.

They have more types of rattlesnakes there than you probably knew existed, unless you're some kind of herpetologist. A lot of them are actually snakes that they've rescued from different horrible fates at the hands of hordes of people who think that they're evil and terrifying just because Salazar Slytherin was kind of a dick. Thanks a lot, J.K. Rowling.

Anyway, the whole place is awesome, and they also have a gift shop where you can get the Single Greatest Mug in the History of Ceramic Beverage-Holding Devices (As Seen on TV!):

Not only does it hold 16 gallons of your preferred beverage, it scares most of your coworkers enough to keep them from ever stealing your drink. Or basically anything you set it on top of.

She came to work with me all the time, and drew compliments nearly every day for most of a year, because she was made from pure awesome that was mined from the earth and forged in the fires of Mount Some Kiln in New Mexico, Probably. She even dressed up for Halloween.

She went as Nagini. The finger belonged to Charity Burbage.

Last Friday was a horrific day. It was my seventh consecutive day of work, because I'd worked the previous weekend. It's summer, which means the exact opposite for libraries as it does for most other places because when school lets out for the summer, guess where everybody drags their hordes of hellspawn children... One patron came up to me at the desk and demanded that I open the plastic case her gas station sandwich came in, because MLS now stands for "Master of Liberating Sandwiches." Another called to complain that she couldn't figure out how to get an ebook because the catalog said "borrow" instead of "check out." Someone tore the "Property of Local Public Library" label off of the latest issue of Guideposts because this apparently wasn't the issue where they discussed the Seventh (or Eighth, depending on your particular version of the Decalogue) Polite Suggestion.

That afternoon, she posed for a picture titled "Installing Java Update."

Version 2.0

On Fridays, I usually take her home so I can give her a proper bath. This week, after I pulled out of the parking garage and was heading down the street, I heard this horrible thumping along the top of my car. At the exact moment my exhausted brain finally figured out what was happening, my eyes shot to the rearview mirror, and the world went into slow motion as I saw her falling forever before shattering on the ground.

The whole way home, I kept telling myself "you're 31. It's just a mug, it's ok," but it wasn't, really (it's possible that this was also exacerbated by depression). I called my wife, practically on the verge of tears, and told her what had happened. She understood completely, because she's awesome. By the time I actually got home, she had already called the museum and had them ship another one, because she's seriously amazing.

We'll probably see her sometime next week. I'm thinking of calling her Daenerys.

Half Empty

"How does one articulate the ongoing sadness of after?"

I feel like I've been writing too damn many of these in the past year—which really just means "any at all"—but even with practice, I feel like I'm very not good at them. I always feel so horribly unqualified, not to mention unprepared; it's not as if I sit around thinking "what would I say about so&so if he/she died?"—especially since I prefer to delude myself with the belief that everyone I care about in any sense of the word will continue living forever. And it already takes me far longer than it should to piss about with writing, re-writing, nit-picking, and finally giving up, saying "fuck it," and hitting "Publish" when I'm writing about something that doesn't matter. It never seems possible to give anyone the kind of tribute they actually deserve. But you shut the fuck up about it and just do it anyway because, good enough or not, they deserve your best effort, which, I hope, is this:

I first discovered David Rakoff simply because of a cover blurb by David Sedaris on his first collection of essays, Fraud. PROTIP: When one of your favorite authors calls someone "the wittiest and most perceptive man in the world," you fucking listen. By the end of the week, I owned and had read both Fraud and Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems, which were the only two he'd written so far. Meanwhile, the expanding pile of work on my desk went largely unnoticed—by me, anyway—as I laughed, sometimes even to myself, while I read.

And then I listened—not often, but when I thought of it. Occasionally I would catch him on This American Life, and of course, I would laugh then, too. I took the opportunities for granted because not only was he only in his 40s, but he was going to live forever anyway. Still, whether it was out loud or on paper, he immediately became another of my examples of How You Funny. So, for a brief moment this morning when I saw his name trending, I forgot about the Laws of Twitter and got excited. This lasted exactly two seconds until I remembered that any time someone's name is trending on Twitter, it is a Bad Fucking Thing. It's always either a) some total douchecannon that you wish would have the decency to go the fuck away forever and stop inflicting themselves upon the world, or b) someone fucking awesome who has died because the universe is a total dick that's already taken Maurice Sendak, Ray Bradbury, Nora Ephron, and Gore Vidal this year, but apparently that wasn't good enough, so it had to take David Rakoff, too. At 47.

So today, too late as usual, I'm listening to his contributions to This American Life and reflecting on yet another huge loss for the writing community, and for the world. You can find his contributor page here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/contributors/david-rakoff, and I would strongly encourage you to listen to every single one of them. And laugh. Laugh, because we need it now more than ever.

"But how lovely those moments were, gone now except occasionally in dreams, when one could still turn to someone and promise them something truly worth their while just by saying "hey, watch this!"

P.S. You can find what others have said, probably much better than I, here:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2012/08/our-friend-david-rakoff
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2012/08/10/158560936/on-already-missing-the-angry-passionate-writing-of-david-rakoff
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/08/david-rakoff-essayist-and-american-life-contributor-has-died/55644/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/books/david-rakoff-award-winning-humorist-dies-at-47.html

And one in his own words:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17lives-t.html

His name is Dennis Harnden.

If you came here today looking to be entertained, you're going to be incredibly disappointed, so you should probably just come back tomorrow. Except don't, because then you'll miss what might end up being the one serious, real thing I ever write here, which is partly because this kind of thing is never, ever allowed to happen again, ever.

​Two days ago, a friend died very unexpectedly. I don’t really know what to say. I don’t know how to write an obituary. I am very not good at death. I ​am good at coming up with a bunch of words that sound really great in my head, then completely losing my shit when I go to say them out loud or write them down, forgetting everything, and blubbering something incoherent or inappropriate. Usually both. This is probably happening right now. I’m also really good at getting drunk, which is not happening right now, but I kind of wish it were. Like the rest of my family, I may not be well-equipped to deal with loss, but I can avoid the shit out of it.

​I’m not going to get all philosophical and try to manufacture some kind of meaning for something that makes no fucking sense. I don’t always know why shit happens, or if it even happens for a reason at all. If it does, it’s beyond me. What I do know is that the world is a little bit darker now, and it’s going to feel like a really shitty place for a while because, frankly, it kind of is. My heart goes out to everyone who knew him, and although anything I can possibly do seems hopelessly insignificant, I'm going to try anyway. He was one of the most hilarious people I've ever met, and a much better snark than I'll ever be. This isn't half as good a tribute as he deserves, but it's the best I know how to give.

Dennis, we miss the hell out of you already.