We all know the drill by now.
Lawmaker is in the news, lawmaker writes self-serving book, lawmaker promotes self-serving book to make a buck.
But John Fetterman is different. I have never read such a searingly candid account of what it means to struggle with depression, to the point of being suicidal.
There’s an excerpt in the Free Press, and it is riveting.
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The Pennsylvania senator has always been a character: a hulking six-foot-eight, doing interviews in hoodies, not nearly liberal enough to satisfy much of his Democratic Party.
Fetterman, you’ll recall, suffered a stroke just before he won the Democratic nomination for his seat.
His wife Gisele noticed a drooping of his mouth and took him to a nearby hospital, which, fortunately, was 10 minutes away.
The surgery saved him, but he had trouble understanding words and phrases, communicating only with an iPhone with closed-captioning.
Fetterman’s condition improved, "but in hindsight I should have quit."
He was constantly mentioned on Fox, or under attack by Dr. Mehmet Oz and his allies: "Uncle Festerman [in an] oversize gym-rat costume," "unfit to run," "the guy can’t talk," a "wax dummy," "where does the man end and the machine." And on social media "Vegetable. Moron. Retard."
This got in his head: "a defining quality of depression, the building blocks of which I had probably struggled with ever since I was a kid. My parents were 19 when I was conceived, and I have always felt it was because of me that my parents were unable to follow their own dreams. When your self-image is negative, as mine was growing up, you gravitate toward shame. You gravitate toward feeling unwanted."
"This inclination persisted even as an adult…"
"Is this my life now?"
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Then came the debate against Oz. He was awful.
"This was a make-or-break moment that would determine the outcome of the election, and I had wilted. I’d choked."
"For the entire three-and-a-half-hour ride back from the debate, I read reactions on X, shooting myself up with the shame that is too often the sustenance of the depressive…"
"For months, I was suicidal. Paranoid. Not eating. Not sleeping. Not speaking. Not functioning. Resigned. Ashamed. Despairing. Despairing everywhere I was. Up was down, and down was up." He won anyway by 5 points.
"Once, as I lay in bed," Fetterman said, "I asked myself, What would you do if there were a pill on the nightstand you could take and not wake up? I would have taken it."
Gisele told him "I could not come home until I was back to being myself: The impact on our kids was just too great." So the senator moved in with his parents.
"By February, I wasn’t eating, and I wouldn’t talk to anybody..."
"I began to feel more alive and animated than I had in months. I was present. I felt energy."
"There were still enormous challenges, though. I was terrified to see my family."
"A young therapist-in-training came in to talk to me one day. 'Gisele and the kids are thinking about coming to visit,' she said."
"I don’t think that’s a good idea." The next day: "The kids are better off without me."
"At that point, she stepped out of her professional mode and said the most important thing that has ever been said to me in my life:"
"Children need their daddy."
The visit at a Wendy’s went well. Everyone was relaxed. He needed their love.
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I don’t care if you like John Fetterman or not, whether you think he should resign or not, whether you think he’s an awful senator or not. If you can read that without being moved, you don’t have a heart.
Depression is a scourge on our society. Many people are on all kinds of medications to try to cope with it, or in long-term therapy, or both.
I’ve never read such a brutally candid account of what it’s like to struggle with depression, let alone from an incumbent office-holder. It certainly deepened my understanding of this deadly disease, and I hope yours as well.
If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).