As of this writing, “Junior Seau Found Dead” is the number one search on Google, and will eventually lead you to Yahoo! Sports Mike Silver’s tearfully well-done post on one of the NFL’s great linebackers. Before I get to the link, I must repeat that depression is something we all face at one time or another. Suicide hurts us all; a friend of mine took his life earlier this year; and frankly the idea has went through my mind for a host of reasons that seemed to converge, as I said – then I think of my Mom.
Mike wrote something worth reading again, and again, and a third time:
This time, it’s not just fate that I’m cursing. Depression is a serious mental-health illness that is often misunderstood, and though Seau may have been struggling with it for some time – as suggested by his possible suicide attempt less than two years ago, when he drove his SUV off an embankment – speculating as to why he might have taken his own life is difficult to do…This much, we know: Depression is not rational. One of its symptoms, in fact, is an irrational thought process that is overly negative and hopeless in nature pertaining to one’s self and surroundings. It’s usually exaggerated, and it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with reality. For some sufferers, it’s like going through life wearing a pair of tinted glasses that distort one’s perception of reality in a ruinous manner.
What’s hardest to deal with this year, for me, is the seemingly inordinately large number of people passing away that I’ve known, or known of – many between 40 and 55.
Here’s Mr. Silver: