Your mother warned you there'd be days like these

 

This week it came out that the death of Matthew Perry was negligence on the part of his doctors and his assistant.  Last year on that fateful day I began a month or so of obsessive reading, researching, rereading his book, relistening to his book and grieving someone I had never met.  When Friends was airing in the 90's I was obsessed with Matthew Perry.  He was most definitely my celebrity crush, and I could not get enough of his onscreen presence.  Friends was my comfort show.  Whenever I couldn't sleep, I would put Friends on in the background.  I haven't really watched an episode in almost a year.  I was just now starting to be able to watch an episode if it happened to come on after my TiVo show ended.  This week's news brought it all back again.  The visions of the ambulance leaving his home, his parents pulling into the driveway past the yellow police tape, his last haunting Instagram posts that made people wonder if Mattman was secretly begging for help.  It seems that perhaps he was.  It made me wonder again what exactly were the last days of his life like?  It breaks my heart that he suffered his whole life with this addiction and depression and the fact that medical professionals took advantage of that for profit turns my stomach. It got me thinking about his assistant, who administered that fatal dose of ketamine, and when is enough enough.

In a world of celebrity worship, the new era of influencers and the social media frenzy and cell phone obsessions when is enough enough?  Everywhere you turn people are suffering from anxiety, ADHD, depression and the list goes on.  When I was growing up (in the stone ages 😜) this was not a thing.  Did we suffer from them and just not know?  Most likely yes.  I remember a few boys in my elementary school who one thousand percent suffered from ADHD - and they were labeled as a problem or dumb.  Do I think that was fair?  No.  But I do feel like the labels of anxiety, depression and ADHD and the like are now thrown around like confetti.  When I was younger, we called it being nervous.  I was nervous about my upcoming exams, nervous about starting a new job - you get the idea.  Nowadays everyone has anxiety - somehow there has to be a difference.  Anyway, I digress.  This week also the whole drama with the "It ends with us" movie is all over social media.  Domestic Violence victims/survivors are speaking out and it makes me wonder.  How many people that we talk to daily are suffering from something that the world never sees?  Have masks become so easy to put on to cover people's pain that no one sees the real struggle people are living with?  I am someone who has always taken people at their word.  But I am also very intuitive and if I spend any amount of time with you, I will feel if something is off.  But if I ask you and you deny it - I will take you at your word.  But I strive to get people to face their inner demons.  I don't feel like people should suffer in silence - I want everyone to take a good hard look at themselves and be honest - at least with themselves - about whether or not they are really ok.  I wonder what would have happened if Matthew Perry had gotten the help he needed dealing with all of his inner turmoil rather than been given drugs to stop his drug addiction (make that make sense please!)  Mental illness is so complex and so misunderstood it baffles me.  Everyone, it seems, is dealing with depression.  And I know some people need the medication prescribed to them.  I am not against that at all, do not get me wrong.  However, I feel like sometimes medication is given and it is truly just a Band-Aid for an underlying issue that is masked.  Meditation, yoga, journaling and even prayer are all ways people can get in touch with the inner feelings/circumstances that are causing the anxiety and depression.  My son and daughter thankfully, are very in tune with the why.  Why am I feeling this way?  Why did that situation make me feel a certain way? And they then figure out the best way to heal that part of themselves that is triggered with a certain situation.  I am so grateful that they learned it from a very young age.  When I was growing up it didn't matter why I felt a certain way I was just taught to deal with it and most likely it was my fault (most everything was apparently).  I was never one to wear a mask and was always upfront with my feelings.  This made people very uncomfortable and often led to people using my weaknesses against me.  So - instead of putting on a mask I simply chose to be selective with whom I showed my true self to.  It brings me back to Matthew Perry and what actually went on that week before his passing.

Did he try to send out "bat signals" saying he needed help?  Were the people he trusted (his assistant, his doctors) basically just putting a band-aid on the underlying issues of why he used and was depressed?  When is it your job or your duty to dig deeper and refuse to offer the band-aid to someone? Personally, I am not a band-aid offeror.  I am blunt and straight forward and it has cost me relationships in the past.  I am the hold the mirror up kind of friend.  Not because I want to hurt people - but because I was once someone who needed that mirror held up to my face to fix/repair/heal those inner demons. Now, I often hold that mirror up to myself because Lord knows I am still a work in progress.  Did people get tired of holding a mirror to Matthew Perry's face?  Did they just turn away because it triggered their own issues?  The world will never know.  But I think in this day in the life we all need to say "I'll be there for you" - and mean it.  Because life is too short to be anything but kind and honest with ourselves and others.