Ron & Me: The Epidemic Within

By Susan M. Scarlet

"Ron and Me: The Epidemic Within" is an intimate narrative about two people faced with life-altering events related to bipolar depression.

In 'Part One: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road,' Susan reveals the well-paved, yet jagged path that led to her own suicide attempt in the summer of 2003.

In 'Part Two: The Ebony and Ivory of Piano Keys,' Susan finds a deep sense of purpose—both preceding and following the police shooting death of her friend Ron, an accomplished jazz pianist with bipolar disorder.

"Ron and Me" delves into the challenges of the mental health system as a whole and sheds light on how people struggle even when they ask for help. Mental illness permeates so many lives—including those who hide their battles on a daily basis. But there is purpose in depression, and we must embrace it in order to set it free!

In this rare book of honesty, Susan speaks with moxie about her own foibles using a straightforward approach to storytelling. She expertly gives perspective to anyone who has ever contemplated suicide and provides a real, much-needed voice to those who have succeeded in taking their own lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098380892

Book preview

About the Author

As a Metro Detroit native, Susan spent much of her career in Los Angeles in the entertainment branding industry. But a bout with life-altering depression sent her back to her roots where she had to defeat what she learned was bipolar depression. Resisting familial suggestions to forgo her career and life’s aspirations, she embraced her disease in all its glory and learned how to survive depressive states.

While a career brand strategist and writer, Ron and Me is her first book, but not her last. She’s currently working on 900 Days, a second memoir about coping with depression while finding peace as a leader, co-worker, divorcee, friend, and sister.

She happily resides in what she calls her little Montecito in Birmingham, Michigan with her two dogs Violet and Nellie. You can learn more about her at https://www.linkedin.com/in/dogdayproduction/.

About this Book

Ron and Me: The Epidemic Within is an intimate narrative about two people faced with life-altering events related to bipolar depression.

In Part One: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road, Susan reveals the well-paved, yet jagged path that led to her own suicide attempt in the summer of 2003.

In Part Two: TheEbony and Ivory of Piano Keys, we understand how her test of fate led to a deep sense of purpose - both preceding and following the police shooting death of her friend Ron, an accomplished jazz pianist with bipolar disorder.

In this rare book of honesty, Susan speaks with moxie about her own foibles by using an uncomplicated approach to storytelling. In doing so she brings lifelong issues to the surface, while giving a much-needed voice to anyone who’s ever contemplated, or succeeded at, taking his or her own life.

Subtle, yet powerful themes:

How the system is failing us.

How the right help is not being applied.

How this illness permeates people just like you and me…or someone you hold in high regard.

That there is purpose in depression…and we must embrace it in order to free it.

With excerpts from:

Hope and Help for Your Nerves - Claire Weekes

Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much - Anne Wilson Schaef

Remarkable Women Live 2004 - Marianne Williamson

Tao Te Ching - Stephen Mitchell

All occurrences in this book took place before 2003 and are indeed factual, based on the recollection of the author and her journals. Some names have been altered to maintain anonymity. Others have not to maintain the integrity of this memoir.

Introduction

If I think back far enough, I vividly remember a fifth-grade school project where we had to design, write, and bind our own book. Mine was about Wilbur, the pig. I was meticulous about the words that described little Wil and the illustrations that portrayed him. Although I couldn’t draw (it was my best friend Kim who drew Wilbur for me), I cared deeply about the content of the book.

I don’t have that book anymore, but I do have a growing collection of children’s books that I will cherish forever: The Little Prince (in French) from Paris, Pinocchio (in Italian) from Rome, The Legend of Sleeping Bear Dune from a family trip to Leelanau, Michigan, The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses, a metaphor for a horseback riding accident on a 1000-acre farm in Aratula, Australia, and The Daddy Mountain, reminiscent of my youngest childhood days when I climbed up my father to ride on his shoulders so I could be BIG. These books are symbolic of my story. In them, lie the values and the tales I’d always hoped to impart on my children. Each and every one is a measure in time when children’s books were the only souvenirs I could afford during my travels.

It was always a dream of mine to write a book. Even before the book about a lonely pig — even before I started to travel abroad - I had become somewhat prolific writing poetry behind the door of my childhood bedroom. This routine, as I now know it, was given to me as a gift. To explore the things I wasn’t allowed to utter, share, or even feel when I was young. I had used writing to curb my anger, thwart my desires, and sift through the confusion. It is no surprise then, that like a diary, I believe every child should be encouraged to put their own words on paper.

Like so many things in life, I figured this distant desire was something I’d get to by the age of 40. If never fulfilled, I told myself, a manuscript of sorts could at least one day become a memoir for my children to read, and then pass down to their children.

I never placed a deadline on this dream. I wanted it to come naturally. And like most things in life, it did.

It had become evident throughout my career that writing was my passion. Oh, being out there in the field was important too. Whether I was traveling with colleagues to an international television festival in the South of France; or hosting VIPs during the Atlanta Olympic Games; or producing segments on healthy living for a Detroit primetime newscast; or pitching media to cover a live filmmaker event for Audi, I came to learn that I had a gift. One that nurtured me. And one that I had to nurture.

Emotions abound and intact. Rises and falls. Failures and lessons…I think I have a story to tell.

What lies in these pages is truth. Some of it was captured in the moment; some is left indelibly in my mind forever. What I venture to do here is uplift a soul, cast some light on self-love, challenge emotional intellect, and inject some levity into an unresolved issue that remains a mystery in even today’s finest medical and spiritual circles.

I had always approached my life as chapters in a book. Here are just a few.

They weren’t exactly like you and me. They were apes. And according to Marianne Williamson, international lecturer, and peace advocate, they were sick. So sick, she said in the luncheon that I partially produced in 2004, that in order to save the dying population of apes, scientists relocated the ailing apes to another village far away.

But when they came back months later to the mother village to check on the remaining ape population – the ones who had been thriving and showing no signs of dysfunction…

They all had died.

The lesson. The sick apes had been depressed. And their depression was merely a sign of more to come. It was a symptom of something quite systemic.

Had the scientists recognized the signs, they wouldn’t have abandoned the other apes who were already predisposed. They could have treated the problem instead of isolating it.

Marianne calls it collective depression. I call it – collective neglect.

PART ONE:

Beyond the Yellow Brick Road

One.one

I didn’t realize I had a problem. Or maybe I should say,