Dying All Over Again

Okay, so the truth is, I have watched You've Got Mail about a million times.  I can quote most of the lines.  I know it's corny, but I just love it.  Most of the movie is really funny, but there is this scene near the end when Meg Ryan's character has to close her book shop.  She has this line where she says that closing the store feels like losing her mother all over again.  And. . .cue the tears.

So, what does this have to do with me?

I just finished a biography about David Foster Wallace:

If you don't know anything about DFW, he was the author of several books, many of which had critical acclaim.  But to me he was one of my English professors at Illinois State University.  I took a class on prose from him, and it was one of the hardest classes I ever took.  When I took the class I had no idea that he was a quasi-famous author who was trying to stay away from the spotlight by living in the midwest.  Now, as I have just learned through his biography, he was a recovering drug addict who had several major bouts of depression, a couple of which caused him to be put in an institution.  I had no idea that while I was trying to get an A in his class, he was trying to climb out of a pit of depression and addiction.

In September of 2008, after trying to get off of some medication because it was taking a toll on his body, he hit rock bottom and hung himself.

When I first found out he had died, I was incredibly sad.  Not because I loved his writings (many of them are intensely graphic, and I wouldn't recommend them--although his nonfiction is AMAZING), but because I felt that he was a lost soul who had struggled with so many things his whole life.  It made me think about how many other people out there are struggling with depression, or addiction, or something else, and they look like they have it all together on the outside.

And now, four years later, as I read the final pages of his biography, it's like he's died all over again.

Life is short.
Time is a gift.
People are hurting.  Everywhere.  Hurting.
And if you are hurting, you are not the only one.  I promise.