Reasons to Stay Alive

Written and Narrated By: Matt Haig

Length: 4 hrs and 13 mins

Very good, but Jiminy H. Cricket…!

So this is when it started for me: I was five years old and my sister was holding my hand as we walked to Hillside Elementary School for the Halloween Carnival. My mom had worked all day, dyeing mop heads: Red for my sister who’d be Raggedy Anne, and mine was yellow as I was Little Bo Peep. She did an amazing job, and the two of us looked adorable, painted, in pinafores, walking hand in hand.

But as glorious red and orange streaked to the west of us, the sun setting in such a breathtakingly beautiful way, with my hand being held by the sister whom I loved beyond reason, I was so very tired: I was done. My thought: Aren’t I dead yet?

An entire lifetime battling clinical depression is what’s followed, and I gotta tell ya that there were parts of fave author Matt Haig’s offering, Reasons to Stay Alive, that I felt were far too devastating to be listened to with avid interest. Make no mistake; this is as honest, as bald, an account of bouts with clinical depression you’ll ever find. Even tho’ Haig’s particular brand of the devastating occurred alongside panic attacks and extreme anxiety, something that I’ve had experience with only a handful of times, this hit sooo close to home.

Tho there were inklings throughout his childhood of what was to come, his expression of the first bout that left him absolutely crippled by despair and suicidal suffering, seemed to come out of nowhere. One day he was living it up, drinking and celebrating being in a paradise, and the next he was curled up in bed, refusing food, trying to, not get through one day at a time, but just trying to make it from one moment to the next hellish moment.

ACK, toooo close, I tell you. If you’re a depressive who’s lost time, friends, love, and chances to the disease, a LOT of Haig’s depictions might leave you in despair yet again. Sure, he peppers his accounts with lists of this, that, or the other, in an effort to toss lifelines he learned only through hard experience and over time, but jeez, his writing is of such an exceedingly high caliber that we the listeners are there, not in his shoes, but curled up in a fetal position, or walking to a cliff, looking down, so close to ending the shrieking in the mind.

And I gotta tell ya, it truly makes a difference whom you have around during such times. I had a husband who didn’t try to make me get out of the rocking chair to bathe or brush my hair; rather, he got me a bound copy of all The Chronicles of Narnia to go with the Harry Potter books I read and reread and reread and reread, feeling my mind go down well-known paths rather than take on the overwhelming stimuli of the present. Haig had Andrea, and dude! I dunno how she did it, cuz they are STILL together. Imagine one moment you’re with a jovial gadabout, the two of you enjoying sunshine and beaches… and the next… you’re opening windows to let fresh air into a stuffy, hopeless room, and you’re encouraging a few bites of food, or you’re dealing with an improperly medicated person. And she stayed through it all: The months living in his parents house (Where his well-intentioned dad tells the absolutely broken and sobbing Matt to get it together), the times when he’d thought he was doing well, what with becoming a published writer, but suddenly he canNOT go to a party to schmooze with other luminaries of the written/published word. With that particular little fiasco, Haig runs flailing from the party to find Andrea at the coffee shop where she’d expected he’d meet her in an hour: He couldn’t do it; he needs her.

Which brings me to one of my least favorite lists: The things for Caregivers and Loved Ones to know. And brother, Haig would have them be all, everything, nothing to themselves. Don’t take anything personally, handle handle handle. He doesn’t come out and say: You’re gonna be carrying the depressive, and forget about your own life; but that’s what the list pretty much implies. Yikes, and Al-Anon, people! You’re not responsible for anyone else on this planet, and if you need help as you navigate life with somebody who’s simply unable to Be? Do find that assistance from a therapist or support group, like, posthaste!

While my sister found the best part to be Haig’s contemplation of our smallness in the face of the Universe’s grandness, the suggestion to remember every now and again how much is out there to embrace and enfold, no time, just Being? Me? I find that panic inducing. I found Haig’s likening of the person TO the Universe, more helpful and so very wonderful. I’m not the black clouds, but I AM the entire blue sky, stretching out and out and out, and these little joys and sorrows, these little physical beings we inhabit are just blips as we are so very much more. Beautiful, simply lovely.

I’m hoping Reasons to Stay Alive was healing for Haig, and with that loooong list that is responses to his query of: What are YOUR reasons to stay alive that is replete with @soandso with #blahblahblah, p’raps that shows he’s found the warm embrace and sense of community that being so very open made available to him. Huzzah for People Who Know, People Who’ve Been There!

Nope, a bit too familiar to me, so this isn’t my favorite format for Haig’s words. That bit about being the Sky with sooo very much passing through and past was wonderful. But I’ve gotten sooo much more from his fiction. The @soandso folks offered many of the same things that can be found in his fiction: The celebration of This Moment; the beauty of Pain that Breaks Ya Open to the Whole Wide World; the lessons from Regrets; a treatise on Time, that sometimes befuddling dimension; and the joy of being able to extend a hand in need and have someone there who’s willing to clasp warmly, reassuringly.

The Joy of Being Alive, for now.

All that? It’s in here. But?

It’s kinda sorta as Andrea told him once after seeing a movie, twisting a line from it: There’s too much Matt Haig in Matt Haig. Loved this; love him. But I’ve been in m’ own head toooo many times that yes, I can recognize a traveler who’s been given a similar path. But BOY!

Is that exhausting or what?! Blessings to Haig, LOVE to Andrea!

And Hail And Well-Met, Fellows on this Path. Let’s walk this way together, and it’s okay if we fall… Got a hand to extend.

I’ll pick ya up…