Depression and Owen Wilson

Owen Wilson was recently hospitalized, and now reports are beginning to surface that he tried to kill himself. The fact that he may or may not have tried to kill himself is really none of my fucking business, but since I recently had a conversation about depression with two people—one of them being one of my oldest and closest friends, the other being someone I have yet to fully figure out—I am taking it all as a sign that I should get some stuff off my chest.

First of all, let me say that I don’t know Owen Wilson, nor would I ever begin to try and figure out what was going through his mind if, indeed, he did try to take his own life. But let’s assume for a moment that Owen was trying to kill himself, or maybe just “crying out for help.” Either way, he must have been in a pretty emotionally fucked up way to try and kill himself.

Few things in life are more difficult than trying to figure out exactly what another person is thinking. And when you throw something like depression into the equation—something that lurks beneath the surface, often inexplicably, where no one else can see it—it becomes even more difficult to understand where another person is coming from or what they are thinking. I have friends who suffer from depression. Serious depression. And personally, I don’t understand it. Don’t get me wrong, I get depressed. Sometimes, I even get really depressed. I’m talking about that feeling of hopelessness, where even in a room full of people that care about you, you feel an aching sense of loneliness. It’s that feeling where you can’t seem to drag yourself out of bed and face the day. But for myself, I always—and I do mean always—drag—myself out of bed and face that overwhelming bullshit that seems to be steadily sucking my will to live from my being. And on those days, I walk…no, make that shamble…I shamble through life like my main man, Bub the zombie in Day of the Dead, vaguely aware of my status of being the walking dead. (That’s Bub pictured below).

Some people can’t pull themselves out of bed on those days when bad goes to worse. I know these people, and I try not to judge them—for again, no one can ever know what is going on in another person’s mind and soul. But what I do know is that if the intensity of the depression felt by my friends is anything like the intensity of the depression that I feel, and they don’t crawl out of bed, even just once, then they probably have a problem. Seriously.

You can call me an asshole all you want, but I know what it feels like to feel like shit. But the key is that you can’t give in to it. I don’t care what it takes to soldier on. If you need to go get medicated, then get medicated. If you need therapy, get therapy. But staying in bed with the covers pulled over your head is not healthy or normal. And I know that “normal” is not exactly something that can be clearly defined. But staying in bed all fucking day feeling like you’re drowning in a septic ocean of lonely desperation is not normal, period.

There, I said it.

If Owen Wilson did in fact try to kill himself, my heart goes out to him. By and large, I don’t condone suicide (in fact I think that in most cases it is a cowardly, selfish thing to do), but I know what it is to be suicidal.

Years ago I was in a terrible depression, and for one night I seriously thought about killing myself. I’m not talking in that fleeting way so many people have thought about taking their own life. I mean that I seriously thought about doing “it.” Luckily, I crawled out of that pit of despair.

When I think about all the things that I have done in my life since that night, I realize what a waste that would have been. I think about this one night in Vancouver, Washington, when I had sex with this blonde chick who lived in one of those mobile homes that was located in some trailer park. She lived with this racist redneck, and she said to me, “We have to be quiet; my roommate doesn’t like black people.” While we were balling, her pet dog, Lewis, somehow got into the room, and started licking my ass. She starts laughing—like having her dog tongue some guy’s ass-crack was normal—and says, “Lewis likes you.” I kept trying to shoo the dog away, while working on getting my nut, but it wasn’t happening. Eventually, I just gave up and let the dog lick me, because in an odd way it kind of felt good. So there I was, screwing this woman in this trailer park, trying not to wake her redneck roommate who hates black people, as the dog was giving me a rim job.

What’s the point of that story? If I had killed myself, none of that ever would have happened; and all of you reading this right now wouldn’t be laughing. Actually…you wouldn’t be reading this anyway, because I would be dead. But that’s all semantics.

What I’m trying to get at here is that life can be great. One day you’re depressed and thinking about killing yourself. The next day, Lewis the dog is licking your ass while you throw a hump into his master. It all balances out in the end.

Life is great. Life is also difficult. But as a wiser man than me once said, “Everything is everything.” We take the good with the bad. And if the bad gets too overwhelming, go get some pills from your doctor.

In the meantime, as a parting gift to all of you, I want to share with a song that has gotten me through some of the worst times of my life.