Seeing the world in colour again — Losing someone you love to depression
Content Warning: depression; suicide
The meaning of life, is still, as it was, simply other people. When we care for each other, we are always in a place that matters.”
— from A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green
“The trees are lushfully* greener.”
I remember my eyes resting on this sentence when I read his last letter to us for the first time. It was striking, and in all the chaos, honestly provided some sense of peace, even if it was just for a while.
We had all lost an amazing friend, a brilliant mind, talented guitarist, student, brother, and son that day. We lost Albert** to suicide, which is a word I still find hard to say. It’s probably still something I find hard to believe happens.
At the wake, I saw faces filled with devastating hurt, confusion, and shock. We asked each other if anyone noticed anything different about him. We offered words of comfort too, though it didn’t seem like words worked at the time. And then we asked the many whys that had no certain answers.
That first night after we were told that he had died, no one could manage to fall asleep, so our group of friends Skyped. It wasn’t to say anything, because we didn’t have words to say, and our cameras were all pointed at the ceiling. It was just a way of being together, holding each other close, and making sure that we were all okay and not alone. I don’t remember how I got home. I just remember getting the call, crying on the Sentosa monorail, feeling bad that I was scaring everyone in that crowded train-car, but not being able to stop. And then because I couldn’t stand up anymore, I just sat on the ground somewhere outside the station. I’m not really sure for how long. It felt like time had frozen still, and like I had frozen too.
By the time we Skyped, I was fresh out of tears, and hyper-focused on finding answers.
I retraced steps, and replayed memories in my mind. I also read about the statistics and causes of suicide, the first-hand accounts of people who have attempted it and thankfully survived, and watched videos explaining what depression feels like.
Mark Henick’s TED talk on his personal experience of depression and surviving suicide was particularly poignant for me.
He said, “If I knew then what I know now, well, it probably wouldn’t have changed very much. […] because sometimes it doesn’t matter what you know, what you feel just takes over. And there’s so many ways like this that our perception becomes limited. In fact, our perception is its limits. And these limits are created by our biology, by our psychology, by our society. These are the factors which create that bubble which surrounds us that is our perceptual field, our world as we know it.”
That night, I tried my best to understand what this meant — that for people living with depression, it’s like being trapped in a perceptual field that just does not have within it the sensory receptors required for the experience of happiness to be possible. Henick describes being able to see others’ happiness, but just not being able to experience it yourself, as hard as you may try.
I didn’t know then that I would viscerally understand what being trapped in that way would feel like.
It was about eight months after he passed that my college counsellor told me that I was experiencing depression, suggesting that I consider medication. At the time, I remember constantly sleeping, laying in bed anyway when I was awake, and going through cycles of feeling overwhelming grief and then feeling absolutely numb. I battled my own thoughts of “not wanting to be alive anymore” each time I stepped out of bed, and felt a blanket of guilt and conflict for these thoughts, and for the fact that Albert would never be here again.
I realise now that in that year, I was seeing the world without colour — that perhaps this was the perceptual field that Albert had lived with too, just for many more years than I ever have. A world without colour was his world as he knew it.***
I think about Albert almost constantly, to varying degrees and in different ways since he passed, which was almost four years ago now. Every once in a while, the mess of dots that make up the entirety of the experience of knowing and losing him connects.
He wrote in his letter that the trees seemed “lushfully greener” somehow when he made his decision to leave. Up until recently, I wondered how it could be possible for trees to seem greener than they already are, almost forgetting my own black, grey year. But I think I understand what he meant now.
There are questions I still don’t have answers to.
I don’t know why his perceptual bubble changed only when he decided on leaving. I don’t know why finally being able to see greener trees in his world here didn’t make him want to stay.
All I know and can hold onto is that in the end, he did experience a brighter world, in all its vivid colours — and that however our perceptions may be limited sometimes, that colours will always come flooding back.
*I’ve decided that I’ll add this word to my dictionary.
**name changed
***I wanted to say that even though he might have seen the world in greys, that he nevertheless painted ours with a spectrum of the most vibrant colours. (Feel It Still, man.)
Watch Mark Henick’s talk below:
