Chris Cornell. Chester Bennington.
When their suicides took place in rapid succession, all the memories of my teenage high school angst took stab wounds to the chest. As with all reports of celebrity suicides, we feel compelled to find reason in them. How could people who have all they could ever want or ask for, including fame, fortune, successful careers doing what they love just throw it all away?
Logically, it doesn’t compute, so after a short time of some superficial philosophical musing, I quickly packaged it all up neatly by saying, “Who am I to know what was going on in their lives at the time? They probably thought they had a good reason which is so unfortunate, but it’s time to move on.” It’s amazingly easy to shrug off someone else’s human experience/struggle, especially when it brings up a lot of uncomfortable themes and emotions.
The problem is, I peek into people’s lives for a living. When you allow yourself to take a deep dive into another person’s struggle, it doesn’t take very long to recognize that unhappiness, loneliness and anxiety are a universal experience - they just come in different flavours.
Earlier this year, I met a doctor who by all of society’s standards was doing well for herself. She was working as an anesthesiologist making insane amounts of money - she just bought her dream house in one of the most sought after sub-developments in town, was working toward paying off her student loans, and after being too busy to do any of the life things during residency (doctor training after med school) she just got married! Life was finally going her way - after 10+ years of delayed gratification, she felt she was finally getting her piece of the American dream.
Fast forward 10 months, right before Thanksgiving I saw her again, except I almost didn’t recognize her this time around. Gone was the aura of excitement and happiness she had when I first met her.
In as little as 10 months, her life came crashing down around her. Her “dream house” needed a ton of work to get it up to the picture perfect image she had in her mind, so of course in order to pay for it all, she started taking more shifts at work. When she was working 60-70 hours a week, she couldn’t spend time on self-care so she stopped exercising, eating and sleeping well. When she stopped doing self-care, she turned into a monster and started taking it out on her husband and their fledgling marriage. When she started dismantling her marriage, he said, “I don’t need to take this shit,” and filed for divorce. “So,” she said with a sense of irony, “I’m losing my dream house that still wasn’t perfect enough, losing my husband AND I have to pay alimony. I get why doctors have some of the highest suicide rates.”
Listening to her story unfold, I came to the horrible realization this could be me in 15 years. This could be me now. The feelings she was describing were so familiar to where I had been emotionally in different phases of my life. When you see a fellow colleague rather than some celebrity grappling with this, it’s hard to compartmentalize and move on because it’s so in your face.
For the last year, I’ve been struggling with wrapping my mind around my life. By all accounts, my life has been the personification of the American dream - work hard, go to college, go to med school, get married, finish residency, be a doctor in private practice, make more than enough money, move to the west coast, buy that 3 bedroom, 2 bath house with that cute little yard - I’m just one son and one daughter away from achieving “perfection”.
But, two and a half years into accomplishing all the career and life goals I had set out to do by the age of 30, instead of being in a constant state of happiness, it all feels empty. After several months of unsuccessfully trying to cover up the shame of this first world problem while simultaneously frantically searching for a quick and easy fix, I’m going take this as a learning opportunity to listen to my own advice (that I totally stole from Brené Brown) that I constantly tell my patients and my sister: Lean into the discomfort.
Call it my third life crisis. Or a millennial dilemma. All I know is I refuse to live this way. I’m going to take a deep dive and hopefully with some humor and compassion will emerge to my better self. May my struggle be of benefit to someone else.
***Main photo taken at Deception State Park, WA
or gardening. Or work less. Or find a way to work for yourself. Or do aerobic exercise every day, first thing so you get a dose of those good, calming endorphins. Physicians are trained to “act with haste” and get all As. Focus on a B- in life and you will be happier. By B- I mean, not treating patients poorly, just treating less of them very well and making B- money.
A generation without God is a depressed, suicidal and empty generation of people