This post was originally published on Defender Network
By ReShonda Tate
The social media mental health specialists are out in full effect. And its naseuating. I have read so many comments of people saying things like something seems off. He seems so happy. He seems so excited about his work and things like that and there’s no way he would do that to his kids. Someone even said ‘No way he committed suicide because he was rich.’ What the entire…..????
People don’t understand what internalized depression looks and feels like for people and there’s a whole different level to it with Black men. His wife lost her husband and instead of people sending condolences, folks are diving deep into conspiracy theories.
It is absolutely possible to be genuinely happy for someone else and still have an internal struggle on your own reason for living. I don’t know what he was going through. He’s someone that I actually met before and he was an absolute light, but so often people are able to be lights for Other but can’t see the light for themselves. I think it’s difficult for some people to understand that you absolutely can be in both of those spaces at the same time. Genuinely happy for someone else and be unable to grasp and hold on to happiness for yourself. But we don’t know what truly was going on with him happiness may be something he had in his life and there’s something else that may have been a burden on him.
We will never know exactly what pushed him to feel as if that was the best choice. As someone who has a clinician as a mate, we’ve had these discussions about how people can mask being OK when they absolutely are not. Including with their significant other, because he may have felt guilty for not feeling fully complete Within himself.
We don’t know if there was some illness and not necessarily physical just like our bodies can get sick. Sometimes the mind can go through something as well. Because no matter what we may think about what happened with him. It clearly was something that he planned. It was clearly something that he felt. This is the best way. That’s no doubt that he loved his wife and his children, but that love did not override whatever internal thing that he was dealing with.
It bothers me that people are trying to lean into blaming someone else without accepting that it’s a choice that he made because he was going through something that he felt like no one would understand or maybe he didn’t want anyone to understand. Just maybe it was something so intense that he just wanted it to stop and people don’t know how to accept that you cannot guilt people into wanting to live. And whatever pain he was going through. He decided that living was not the best option.