My troubles with depression probably go back to freshman year of college, at Cornell University.
I may have been a little depressed in high school too, but nothing like what happened at Cornell. I had gotten in over my head academically, and i retreated within myself. My physics professor didn’t care that i had stopped coming to class, and my friends just let it slide. Outwardly, i seemed OK most of the time; but inwardly, i had become obsessed with suicide.
There was something of an under-culture of suicide at Cornell in the 1980s & ‘90s. There were many grisly jokes about self-harm (and roommate harm) going around in those days. When it came close to exam time, people would yell to each other as we were crossing one of the bridges (especially the one with no guard-rails) that went over the deep gorges cutting through campus — “Don’t jump! It’s not worth it!”
That’s what suicide had been reduced to — a joke.
And i had become obsessed with a Peter Gabriel song, called “Mercy Street” about the poet Anne Sexton who eventually killed herself. I used to put the CD in my stereo and set it to infinite-repeat on that song; i would lie on my bed and listen to it for hours.
Oh no, i didn’t have any problems.
[There’s a YouTube link at the bottom of this entry, in case you’re not familiar with the song.]
My roommate was so busy with school that i rarely saw him, and he didn’t know how bad it had gotten. I used to go up to the study lounge on the top floor of our high rise dorm in the evening and think about how it would feel to jump off the balcony. And of course the bridges too.
dsm32 