Ask Lisa how she is and really mean it

She walks into the house, eyes puffy from crying.

Gerald’s busy doing his routine crossword puzzle while blasting Pink Floyd.

Lisa asks how his day was, as she does every night. Gerald unnoticingly answers his cliche response, fine, yeah, sales were good. A minute goes by before he remembers to ask about her day. Upon finally asking, Lisa nods and says it was a great day.

Lisa is a liar. She lies to her ten year boyfriend, Gerald, she lies to her family, she lies to the world. She lies because she thinks if she tells the truth she will suddenly be judged, questioned, labeled. Lisa is depressed and contemplating resting eternally.

No one knows how Lisa feels, because Lisa doesn't allow anyone to know. She hides away her troubles, thinking this is best for everyone. She doesn't want to burden anyone, who would? There are troubles in life and she isn't naive enough to think she’s the only one suffering. So, she continues to suffer, alone.

Finally, Tuesday comes around. Everything seems to be going wrong. Her coffee at Starbucks was made incorrectly and she felt rushed to leave because of the line of Nissan's and Toyota’s behind her 2002 Honda. She drives away, crying; the littlest things these days sets off Lisa’s river of emotion. She cries in the shower, on every drive, and even at night right before drifting away in hopes of not waking up the following morning.

After the coffee fiasco, Lisa attempts to walk into her local Library to find one of her favorite high-school reads, Go Ask Alice.

The Librarian seems to be oddly impatient when she has trouble locating this book. She starts to point in a direction and mumbles to another just as lazy co worker about why the Library is still open while everything is going digital, and she does not get paid enough to walk people around. Lisa feels a sense of guilt and discomfort and decides to walk-out without any books.

She heads to the car where she thinks she’ll try to reach her friend from school, Liz, the one who always is on top of her school work. She calls Liz and gets the voice mail.

Lisa decides to head to the school and focus on her homework. As she walks into the bright blue building, she notices Liz and another classmate, Patty, walking and laughing. Lisa assumes her call was ignored intentionally and decides to head the opposite direction. Tears start running down her face and anger fading in making her wonder why she is crying. She feels she cannot take this any longer and runs back to the car to head home. Maybe Gerald can make her feel better.

She comes home to find Gerald doing the same old boring crossword puzzle, but this time Nickelback is playing. She asks how his day was and he answers same as always. She waits this time for him to ask so she can maybe finally spill what a bad day she’s had. Gerald seems too preoccupied in his puzzle, Lisa gets impatient and heads into the bathroom.

She begins writing a note, a goodbye note. She starts with apologizing to her parents and Gerald. She says she cannot take this pain any longer and she must end the suffering. As she writes she has tears falling from her face.

In the middle of her second paragraph she stops writing and rips up her letter, flushes it down the toilet, and starts laughing.

She cannot help herself, she continues to laugh hysterically, as if she’s just watched a marathon of Will Ferrell movies. She doesn’t know what has overcome her.

In the middle of writing her apologies, she realized she didn't even apologize to the right person. She sees that she should have been writing an apology to herself.

***

When she first began to notice her unstable mind so easily affected by what most would consider small affairs, instead of researching and getting help Lisa felt her only option was to suffer alone. Most victims of depression do feel this exact way. They have feelings of guilt, as if this was their choosing and own doing that caused their brains to react this way and the chemical imbalance is somehow their fault. This, however, is not true.

No one wants to burden anyone, but do you know what happens when someone commits suicide? They don’t take away their own pain, they simply transfer it to someone else.

Whether you realize it or not a lot of people actually care about your existence. No person is obligated to telling you this, but you do matter. Maybe the reason for your life isn't as obvious and shiny as Katy Perry’s or Rachel McAdam’s, but you have a reason as to why you are here.

So many people are dying every second and do not want to. They are fighting and struggling to breathe to stay one more moment alive... And then there are sad, lonely, depressed, and hopeless people, such as Lisa, who feel they do not belong and should not.

Lisa has every right to feel how she may, but she does not in any way deserve it. For every moment you may feel unwanted or unimportant, stop and think to yourself that somewhere you have made someone’s day. You have made another person smile. You may not have known it, but you have. You see hundreds of people throughout your life and with that sight you come across tons of thoughts.

Some thought are good while others may be bad, but you still thought something. That girl’s outfit is pretty, that guy’s smile is nice, that family looks happy, whatever. With this in mind try to remember that you’ve been a thought for someone else. Someone out there must’ve thought what a nice smile you had, how great maybe your life was, and whether it is the truth or not, you still affected that person somehow just by walking past them.

Now imagine, if you do decide to be courageous and open up to others while you are suffering, just think what the possibilities could be. What if the person you open up to is perhaps suffering, in another way, too?

We expect people to not make assumptions about us, all the while we continue to make assumptions about others. “They’ll just find me as a burden.” “I don’t matter enough to share my problems.”

How dare you answer for someone you haven’t even asked. You don’t know, and that’s the beauty, you’ll only know when you be brave enough to share. The very act of you sharing your story, could help another person. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that helping someone else is far more satisfying than helping myself. Stay happy, own up to your feelings, and get help if you need it because you deserve to be happy. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, ever.

-ssr