The Illness Hidden With A Smile

[Keith Maitland]

Kate Spade and the Illness Hidden With a Smile

'Suicide, no matter how well we know a person, usually comes as a shock, even a violation, putting the lie to our conviction that existence is to be cherished. The fact that taking one’s own life can exist on a parallel track with our ordinary days, in which we go out to dinner or put our children to bed or worry about growing old, always puts me in mind of W. H. Auden’s poem "Musée des Beaux Arts.” Overtly about the poet’s gazing upon Bruegel’s painting “The Fall of Icarus,” the poem evokes the relativity of tragedy and the isolation of despair: “About suffering,” it begins, “they were never wrong,/ The old Masters: how well they understood/ Its human position: how it takes place/ While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.”

We are all, always, outsiders when it comes to other people’s pain. But there is no starker reminder of that truth than suicide.'

RTWT here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/opinion/kate-spade-depression.html

[Nearly Sane]

Of the people I know who committed suicide, most were not a shock. I agree that thinking someone to be happy is no guarantee that they are but so is thinking they are miserable. If we are outsiders when it comes to pain, we are also outsiders when it comes to joy. Fetishizing either seems odd to me.

[Rhiannon]

Totally agree, NS. And we really need to get away from this romanticised ideal that exists in some quarters of suicide as evidence of a tortured genius, or a tortured soul, as though that’s some kind of romantic tragedy. It is nothing of the kind; it’s ugly and painful and, ultimately, unsurprising.

[Nearly Sane]

There is huge indulgent piece of shite, that are all about death being a simple answer. It isnt. It misses what we are 'dropped forms, shambling off between the trees'

[Robbie]

Get what Keith says. One can never tell. V. hard for those left behind.

[Rhiannon]

Get what Keith says. One can never tell. V. hard for those left behind.

Yes, one can tell sonetimes, at least, those close can. I’ve met people whose suicide attempts were as a result of a sudden illness/depression and you hope they will recover. These are the ones where suicide shocks the most I think. I’ve met those whose repeat attempts are a way ofvtrying to escape something else other than life. And I’ve met those who, it’s clear, will most likely succeed in taking their lives. They are some of the bravest people I’ve met, trying so hard to get well and fix themselves, usually because they don’t want to hurt those that they love.

And even that oversimplifies it.

[Rhiannon]

Just read to the end of the article. Kate Spade’s daughter is 13. Christ. 

[Rhiannon]

Sitting in my garden feeling quite angry. Not so much about this particular bereavement - as I understand it from a statement from her sister Late Soade refused help - but generally. How many more deaths will it take before mental health care and research gets the kinds of resources needed to actually save lives? A teenage girl I know went to her GP and got given a website to look up. Ffs.