Rypien lost a fight few can fathom

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/08/2011 (5351 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s no one to blame for Rick Rypien’s death. You can’t point the finger at his family, friends, teammates, doctors or a medical system that, even now, can be less than competent in helping patients manage their mental illnesses.

You can’t blame Rypien, a 27-year-old Winnipeg Jets winger, for succumbing to his nemesis. If you’ve never felt the black dogs snapping at your heels, never tried to keep up with friends who metaphorically run through a park on a sunny day while gumbo sucks at the bottom of your shoes, you have no idea how mental illness can destroy a soul.

In his slim volume Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, writer William Styron explains depression:

“Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self — the mediating intellect — as to verge close to beyond description. It thus remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it in its extreme mode, although the gloom, ‘the blues’ which people go through occasionally and associate with the general hassle of everyday existence are of such prevalence that they do give many individuals a hint of the illness in its catastrophic form.”

The clinically depressed may not exhibit outward signs visible to anyone other than a doctor or another patient. The world sees, as they did in Rypien’s case, a successful young man with a dream career. They can’t imagine him gazing in a mirror and seeing a shattered distortion. If you’ve never seen that funhouse version of yourself, you can’t understand.

Rick Rypien was what is called “high-functioning.” He still had his career, his home and his family. He’d taken time off to deal with his depression. He came back and people thought he was fine. He presented well, and that’s not something you associate with the mentally ill. They are “the others,” they shout in public and lose their personal hygiene and frighten children.

But there are many more of us who take our medications, get more sleep than the average person, hold jobs, care for kids and thank God every night for a loving and supportive husband. On the surface, we’re just fine. Most of the time, we click right along. And then there are the nights and days of fear, of conviction you’re a fraud and that your world would be better off without the burden.

Not always. Not recently. But like a bogeyman a kid is afraid is hiding under her bed to grab her ankle when she least expects it, so too does depression lurk in dark corners. You just try to get better at pretending it’s not there.

Hockey writer Gary Lawless interviewed Rypien’s former teammate after news broke of his death.

“He seemed to be in a good place,” Mike Keane told Lawless. “We chatted off and on this summer and he was happy with the way things were going and how he was feeling.

“It’s a shock. His demons were stronger than anyone knew.”

They usually are. That’s not to say a carefully tweaked combination of meds, therapy and support can’t save most people from the precipice. It’s damned hard work, both for the ill and those who love them. Words cannot properly describe how hard it is, every day, every night.

But we try. Rick Rypien tried until he couldn’t anymore. He had done things right and his mind failed him anyway.

If there’s a silver lining (and I’m the first to admit it’s tarnished), the death of this fine athlete and his willingness to discuss his illness open a door to other mentally ill people.

This disease isn’t fair and it doesn’t discriminate. It’s not weakness. If you battle this disease, you’re a warrior. And if you fall during the battle, you’re still a warrior.

Rick Rypien will force us to talk about an illness that exists in whispers. Maybe it’s a dream, but I pray those conversations will be couched in gentleness and understanding.

Because if they’re not, a lot of people will return to silence and darkness.

lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.ca