Thanks for the Laughter
August 12, 2014I’m not going to lie, I cried today.
For the first time in my life I shed a tear over the death of someone I’ve never even met. As we all know by now, yesterday we lost one of the funniest men who has ever lived. Robin Williams, the seemingly playful and happy-go-lucky actor tragically took his own life. He was my childhood hero, and the reason I’ve wanted to get into comedy my entire life. I want to keep this brief, but I really needed to write something down.
Depression and mental illness are serious diseases. As someone who’s grown up with a physical illness (I have renal failure and have been in and out of the hospital my entire life), I can relate. There are times when I’ve been so ill that I can’t get out of bed and I’ve had so many surgeries that my co-workers have started lovingly calling me “Frankendrew” (because of the scars). Still, nothing is as hard as the days when the stress of living this way just gets to me. The fact that I can never live a normal life, that I can never travel the world or live some of the dreams that I’ve had my whole life because I’m so sick really gets me down. I can’t say I’ve ever gotten to the point of contemplating suicide, but that’s mainly because of the people in my life that I love that love me in return, and because I can take how I feel during those hard times and turn it into something beautiful.
That’s what Robin Williams has been doing for his entire career. He will live on through the jokes he told and the movies that he made. Even now as I watch Jack, the first in my marathon I have planed for the day, I’m reminded how this movie helped me as a child that was bullied. I’m reminded that words and ideas can change the world, that spending time with the perfect girl is more important than any baseball game, and that laughter is the best medicine.
Rest in peace, Robin. Thank you for making us laugh. We’ll miss you so much.
Well said, Drew. He is not only part of my childhood, but my children’s as well. I am stunned, sad, heartbroken – and everything in between. This has hit incredibly hard, I think, because he was such a larger-than-life character, but all that noise had to come from somewhere, and sadly, mental illness can foster such talent. I hate the people that have said he was “selfish” for taking his own life because they do not know Robin Williams or his story. They do not know what it is like to live with a mental illness, to have all those scary thoughts surface. They just do not know.
I am going to miss Mr. Williams, for a long time, I think.