For the past month I've often thought about Dooce. I read her blog from beginning to latest when I was working my first job as a temp in a government library in 2004, and followed her story as she was pregnant with her first child, checked into a mental ward for PPD, and was one of the first I encountered to speak candidly about living with mental illness, something I strongly identified with. As time went on and my life got more hectic moving to NYC I occasionally went to her blog, and knew she'd had a second child, divorced her husband, and was sad to see that after the divorce she progressively seemed lost as blogging was no longer a lucrative career. She declared herself an alcoholic after I had been sober for over a year myself so I also knew how hard the first years are, trying to be sober and mentally ill.

On May 10th I saw a headline on Fark's Business page - "Dooce drops", and figured she had deleted her web page. Instead she had deleted herself. She committed suicide May 9th.

Of course I didn't know her in person, but I understood all too well that her diseases of mental illnesses and alcoholism had taken her down. Despite her children, her family, and all of the times she had tried various treatments, she lost her struggle.

Depression, anxiety, and alcoholism are day to day issues that take up the majority of my energy and so damn much of my mental real estate to remain productive and focused. Some days even basic tasks are too much to handle, so those get skipped. And as I age, while some things do get easier (I have an established job, I've pushed through this before, I can use this short cut to make it (and me) look presentable when I have no more will to do it "the right way"), the less energy I have on bad days. She was only three years older than me, and I imagine that a really, really bad day was what happened.

In many ways her experiences taught me that it's ok to break, to be willing to seek help, to realize that the help you receive isn't always the help you need at the time, but that you have to keep going. Even though she didn't make it, I still have every intention to do so, even if the path is rarely smooth. Most of all I hope that her family can come to a fairly peaceful understanding of her passing, since suicide is never simple for those left behind. I also hope that you've finally found the peace you sought, Heather.