A Public Service Announcement

[shamelessposer]

(Moderators, please don't delete this. I know the Benoit thing has been done to death, but hopefully the perspective I offer is different enough to lead in a direction that will result in actual discussion instead of the usual flamefest.) I posted this on Facebook, and thought I'd crosspost it here. I'd prefer that any criticism be on the merits of what I've written rather than the usual talking points. ================ Most of you are probably just dimly aware of the name Chris Benoit, and the rest either don't recognize his name or already know exactly what this post is about. Chris Benoit was a World Wrestling Entertainment Heavyweight champion. He was one of the best pure athletes his business had ever seen. He always had time for fans and was a consummate professional around his coworkers. The man was something of a hero to me from about the time I first went to high school until the day he died. And it was the circumstances of his death that caused a lot of people to stop seeing him as a hero. On or around June 24 of 2007, Chris Benoit snapped. No one is sure exactly why, but in a twenty-four hour period he strangled his wife, smothered his son, and then hanged himself on a piece of exercise equipment in his home's basement. The professional, the family man, and the all-around nice guy committed a double murder-suicide for reasons that are unfathomable to any rational human being. One of Chris Benoit's signature moves was ironically called the "Suicide Headbutt," and was performed by standing on top of a turnbuckle and taking a leap of faith onto his prone opponent. He did this as many as five nights a week for years on end, even suffering severe neck injuries as a result of his always intense matches. Benoit suffered a more or less broken neck in the summer of 2001, and by the end of the summer of 2002 he was fully recovered and doing suicide headbutts on television again. It wasn't until his autopsy that the other effect of his head trauma was discovered: Chris Benoit had calcium deposits in his skull, and they were putting severe pressure on his brain. He suffered from bouts of depression and dementia. One doctor said he had only seen this sort of brain damage in a seventy year old Alzheimer's patient. Chris Benoit mostly kept to himself, and when he talked to his friends it was rarely about himself. His misguided attempt to be strong and keep his problems from other people was his downfall, and he and his family paid the price for it. For those who don't know, I suffer from depression, panic disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder. I developed these problems early in life, although when exactly is hard to say. Lots of people, friends and family included, thought that I was a little "off" but of course none of them had a clinical explanation for it. And I wasn't about to find one. In September of 2005, after ignoring my issues for far too long, they got the best of me. I woke up very early in the morning in the middle of possibly the worst panic attack I'd ever experienced. I was compelled to either go into a fetal position on the floor or kick out the air conditioner to the window of my second story bedroom and jump out after it. I wasn't suicidal at that point, but kicking out my air conditioner and jumping out the window certainly seemed to me in my deteriorated state to be the fastest way out of the room. As a result of my nervous breakdown I spent ten days in a state mental hospital. Six months later it was my depression that overcame me rather than the panic disorder, and another week and a half stay (this time at a nicer facility in Chapel Hill). My misplaced pride nearly got me killed. Because I didn't get help when it would have done the most good I've lost several years of my life and at twenty-two years of age I'm still living with my mother and unemployed. While my friends are graduating college or studying abroad, I'm living in the town I swore in elementary school I'd leave at the nearest possible convenience. And yet it still could have been worse. With depression on top of panic disorder, it's a wonder I was only ever in danger of hurting myself and not anyone else. How far removed could my story have been from Chris Benoit's? What caused him to kill and me to seek help? It's not a question I'm comfortable asking, but with any luck at least a little use could come from it. It's easy to turn Chris Benoit into a monster for what he did. It feels safe. As long as we can consider him an unperson we don't have to accept that there's little dividing the Chris Benoits of the world from the Clayton Wicks of the world. But doing so means ignoring any lessons that could be learned from his tragedy. If you need a shoulder to cry on, find one. If a friend needs to talk out some problems, be there. And if you need help, get it. Mental illness is an illness first and foremost, and that means there is treatment. Ignoring the options available when suffering depression is as stupid as not going to the doctor when suffering from cancer. And like cancer, mental illness can eat you alive if you let it. Clayton