Call Me Before You Go: A Guide to Help Keep Your Friends Alive as They Fight Depression

By Ruthie Gayle

Depression hijacked your friend. What do you do next?

Someone you love struggles with depression. That loved one may be on the brink of suicide. You're not a doctor or a therapis

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ruthie Gayle
• Release date: May 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985612462

Ruthie Gayle

Ruthie lives a happy, amazing, normal life in Fort Collins, Colorado, with her husband and their three wildly expressive children. She likes to spend her days in the garden developing her not-so-green thumb, hiking, and chasing sunsets at the lake. Cooking is her favorite therapy, and writing is her preferred form of art. Church is a field of wildflowers, and she has definitely found God at the golden hour. When she is not forming paragraphs and crafting stories, she can be found with her outdated Samsung, shooting closeups of grass and other weird things. She will never turn down a cappuccino with extra foam or an iced latte-even if it's cold outside. And if you bring her a pie, she will be your friend for life.

Book preview

introduction

IREMEMBER THE DAY I was finally done.Done fighting. Done hoping. Done trying. DONE. I was around four months pregnant with my third child, and it was the fifteenth day in a row that I woke up with intense pressure in my head and a load of bricks on my heart. I just couldn’t do it anymore.

Tears pushed from my eyes as they had done every day for the past eight weeks, and I couldn’t even try to hide them anymore. The pain was too much. The shame was too great. I was completely convinced by then that I was a worthless blob of a human, and I was going to end it that day.

I was going to finish myself off and end this torment once and for all.

I tried to muster up the strength to go to the bathroom, but it seemed so far away. Eventually, I made it out of bed, but I saw a pile of laundry laying on my bedroom floor as I staggered onto the cold, hard tiles. I remembered that it was Monday, and I didn’t know how I could possibly go through another week, I was so overwhelmed.

It felt like work just to breathe, but I figured if I could get that pile of laundry sorted, perhaps I would feel better about myself, and I could make it one more day.

I sat down beside my laundry, began to sort the pieces, and that’s when I saw my son’s shirt—the one that I had bought for him with the dinosaurs on it. He was so proud every time he wore it. I thought about how much I had failed my son in his four short years. I thought about all the times I had tried to hide my tears from him and how many times he had seen them and wondered, Why is Mommy crying?

Earlier that morning, I was feeling so much shame that I was in bed again. He came into my room, quietly walked over, and leaned his tender body over mine. With his soft hand on my weary body, he told me over and over, I love you, Mama. He was only four years old, but we had such a deep connection. He seemed to know what I needed and how to reach me when no one else could.

I thought about him and how much it would break his heart if he woke up tomorrow and couldn’t run to hug his mama. The thought of that crushed me to my core, but I had no more strength left to keep going. I felt terrible that I hadn’t been the parent that he deserved. I was certain I had let him down not only because I physically hadn’t been able to play with him lately, but now I was also adding another little person to his life, and it felt like I was abandoning him altogether.

I collapsed from the sheer weight of my tormented thoughts onto that pile of laundry, my body convulsing in sobs. I lay there in my feelings of worthlessness for what seemed like hours, repeating over and over in my thoughts about how much I had failed my son and how I would surely continue to fail him and his sister if I stayed. But, oh, how I would fail them if I left. Either way, I would be failing them, but one way would at least end my suffering.

I drifted in and out of consciousness as I thought about how much I needed to end it, yet, how I couldn’t. I couldn’t lift my body off of that laundry pile. So I just lay there, squeezing my eyes shut, hoping that somehow I could go to sleep and not wake up again.

But then I thought about my son again. I remembered his big brown eyes and how they sparkled every time I took him somewhere with me. His eyes would dance with delight. I thought about how full of life they were and how I didn’t want to be the reason they would be dimmed.

Around that time, my husband came in and found me in my frozen state. Who knows how long I had been there. I started weeping, but I still had no words for what I was feeling, so he held me while I woke up from my subconscious stupor and finally found some words to tell him how much pain I was in and how hopeless I felt.

This was not the first time that my husband had witnessed the ravagings of this disease, nor would it be the last. He had come face to face with this demon many times before and watched it almost take out his wife—the mother of his children. And he would fight it many times thereafter. There were numerous times before and after this that I had either planned, schemed, or attempted my own death.

The crazy thing is, I’m still here. And that’s because each time, there was someone there. Someone would inevitably show up to distract me, hold my hand, or change my mind. They would call me back from the edge.

This is the story of my depression, and it is not a pretty one. It is one of struggle and suffering, of agony and mental illness, and the absolute hell that it is. It is the story of spiritual and emotional breakdown, of crippling disease, and my fight for freedom from it.

This is a story about a lost little girl who didn’t know where to go with her sadness, until one day she found herself in a circle of humans who cared—who fought fiercely for her freedom. How the world had broken her, and yet how she experienced friendship in the most powerful and healing ways. This is the story of how she went to the edge and how she survived. This is a story about the love that saved her.

This is my story.

CHAPTER ONE

i wish i would have known

_____________________

Far too few of us know how to help our friends when they’re suffering from depression. We don’t know how to speak to them, we don’t know how to listen, and we don’t know how to reach them.

JULIE WAS A FACEBOOK FRIEND, and although I did not know her personally, she was in my circle of mutual friends, and I believe I may have met her at a youth Bible school when we were kids.

When I saw a friend’s post about her passing, it hit me like it always does when someone succumbs to this ugly beast—like a dagger to the deepest parts of my soul.

I immediately went to her page where there were already so many wishes and memories expressed. There were beautiful tributes and words of anguish, but mostly there was regret.

Sweet Julie, they said. I wish I would have known you were hurting.

I would have driven hundreds of miles to be with you.

I just saw you a few weeks ago. I wish I would have known.

I wish. I wish. I wish.

The words burned into my soul as I read them and grappled with the gravity of what they meant, but the real heartbreak came from Julie herself, just days before she died.

She wrote:

It’s too heavy. I can’t carry it all anymore.

Those were her last words. They struck me like a giant freight train to my chest, and I will never forget them.

Every time I’ve thought of Julie, I’ve remembered her words. She had been reaching out, but nobody heard her. Or maybe they heard her, but they didn’t know how to reach her. They didn’t know how to communicate their love and care for her.

I’ve realized that the problem is not that people don’t have someone in their lives who loves them or deeply cares about them—it’s that these loved ones don’t know how to speak their language.

As I started thinking about all the other Julies, I started to see some common themes with depression. People often see the signs after it’s too late. They realize that the person was, in fact, reaching out, but they either didn’t see it at the time, or they didn’t know how to reach them.

It’s all too common of a story. Maybe you have a Julie in your life who is depressed, but you don’t know how to help her. You want so badly to see her free and happy, but you don’t know what to do.

You’re not alone.

Here in the U.S., there are an estimated 48,344 people who commit suicide every year, and that number is steadily growing, especially since the global events of 2020.

Times have been hard, and this tells us just how serious it is. It is an epidemic that doesn’t discriminate.

If you think this is a disease of the poor or the unpopular, consider the many celebrities and famous people in recent years who have committed suicide. Robin Williams, Anthony Bourdain, Chris Cornell, and Mindy McCready, to name a few. They were some of the most highly sought-out individuals on the planet.

Consider all the actors and singers, such as Heath Ledger and Michael Jackson, who have died from drug overdoses. This is not something that only affects the reclusive or the loners; this affects some of the most beloved and popular among us.

What if we all listened a little more?

Do you think that any of these people died because they had no one who loved them enough or because no one in their life cared about them?

To me, it’s obvious. Far too few of us know how to help our friends when they’re suffering from depression. We don’t know how to speak to them, we don’t know how to listen, and we don’t know how to reach them.

Now before I go further, let me say that I do not believe we are responsible for another person’s death or suicide. If someone you know intentionally ends their life, that decision was theirs and theirs alone—not