Matthew Perry Helped Keep Me Alive After My Suicide Attempt

This essay comprises discussions of suicide and disordered consuming.

Matthew Perry won’t ever comprehend it, however he saved my life.

It was the summer season of 2005. I used to be 19 on the cusp of 20. It was the tip of the world as I knew it, and I hadn’t discovered that the world has a behavior of happening whether or not we prefer it or not.

A boy had left me. It’s a time-honored story, and never an authentic one. He was neither the primary nor final casualty in what was to develop into a veritable Antietam of relationship carnage — however he was additionally my fiancé.

Two screwy children with sufficient baggage to floor a Boeing 747, we had a hoop and a date, and he’d promised to spend the remainder of his life with me. To my depression-scrambled mind, that was all that mattered. He was, consequently, Judas and Brutus and Benedict Arnold all rolled into one. Any understanding or empathy for the boy who left a relationship that had develop into an inferno of distress for each events concerned can be years in growing. I used to be 19 years outdated, and I fancied myself ill-used.

I grew up a spiritual homeschooler in radically conservative, insular circles, so I’d by no means seen “Mates” in all the decade it had been on the air at that time, or within the yr because it had ended. That modified after I tried to die by suicide. As I used to be floating out and in of consciousness amid a haze of fluorescent lights and nurses murmuring in hushed elegiac tones ― downing charcoal to coat my abdomen lining, consuming stale hospital-cafeteria mashed potatoes and watching limitless reruns whereas awaiting switch to a northern Virginia psychiatric ward ― I stumbled upon my first episode of the hit sitcom. At a time when the world appeared virtually unfathomably darkish, the forged of “Mates” made me snigger with my full throat in methods I didn’t know I used to be nonetheless able to. My beloved Chandler, performed by Perry, made me snigger the toughest of all.

A broke faculty pupil, I scrimped and saved my pennies to purchase the Season 1 “Mates” boxed set on DVD after I obtained out of the hospital. I’d did not die as soon as however was decided to provide it one other go. I quickly realized — grudgingly — that I needed to seek out out what occurred to Chandler and his mates, so I made a decision to carry off on ending my life till I completed the primary season.

Individuals have humorous concepts about melancholy. They suppose once you’re suicidal, you want some lofty raison d’etre, some grand, noble capital-C trigger for which to remain alive. You don’t. You want any outdated rattling factor to maintain you right here. You’d miss your mother’s chili. Your neighbor’s outside cat wants you. It’s virtually tech week, and you’ve got a stage manufacturing to open. You’ve by no means been to a Renaissance truthful. It’d be good to seek out out if Rachel obtained off the aircraft. You latch onto no matter foolish, asinine factor will get you thru the evening, usually with white knuckles and gritted tooth, and hold on for pricey life — generally actually.

So I stayed alive to complete Season 1 and needed to know what occurred subsequent. Once more, I saved my neighborhood-pool-snack-bar paycheck to purchase the Season 2 boxed set to observe the antics of Chandler and the gang.

At this level, I needed to know the way all the collection ended. I knew there have been 10 seasons and 236 episodes, so I made a pact with myself to make it via each episode of “Mates” alive. If I nonetheless needed to kill myself, I may do it after the ultimate credit rolled.

Fortunate for me, these boxed units had been costly as hell, and it took me some time to avoid wasting up the money. Months handed. I laughed and cried with the six mates via Emma’s start, Chandler and Monica’s wedding ceremony, Heckles’ dying, the twins’ adoption. Via all of it, Perry made me stomach snigger and ugly cry every day until the fog cleared and life now not appeared like such a drag. (And, for the file, they had been completely on a break.)

By the point Rachel obtained off the aircraft, I didn’t need to die anymore. However I did, like Matty, go on to do a number of rehab stints.

Regardless of our one-sided parasocial relationship, Perry had his demons and I had mine. My very own three journeys to remedy services in three states between 2008 and 2012 had been for “anorexia – binge/purge subtype,” a illness that nearly killed me as I continued to struggle for my life all through my 20s.

In 2011, I blew off a callback weekend for an MFA program on the New Faculty of Drama and as a substitute spent my time in New York holed up in a seedy motel watching “Mates,” curled up in a fetal place as a result of I used to be too dizzy to get to the audition. Not lengthy after, I gained the Cliff Smith Award for Excellent Route for a manufacturing I’d directed in Maryland. I wasn’t there to just accept it. My decade of anorexia and bulimia had landed me within the ICU once more with death-defying potassium ranges of 1.2 millimoles per liter, and I had acquired lengthy QT syndrome, a life-threatening cardiac situation. My mates, like Perry’s, rooted for me until the bitter finish. One in every of them accepted my award on my behalf.

In a 2011 assertion earlier than one in every of his restoration laps, Perry wrote (in true Chandler model): “I’m planning to go away for a month to give attention to my sobriety and to proceed my life in restoration. Please get pleasure from making enjoyable of me on the World Extensive Internet.”

I felt a sliver of his ache; that very same yr my then-boyfriend launched a really public GoFundMe towards my needs to ship me to rehab — but once more. The assistance was wanted however the publicity harm.

Residential remedy is a instrument, not a fast repair. It’s a loud and lonely place. I gained some weight, discovered some issues about myself, made some mates and picked up a nasty smoking behavior. A few of what you study in rehab sticks; a few of it doesn’t. Platitudinously, however actually, you get out of it what you place into it. Restoration, like grief, is hardly linear, however filled with peaks and valleys alongside the way in which. Like Matty and me, you usually end up revisiting the identical panorama. There aren’t any guidelines, and there’s no timeline.

After the 2021 “Mates” reunion, Twitter was alight with criticism of Perry’s face, his tooth, his mannerisms throughout that section of his restoration. One consumer spoke my coronary heart: “He was alive and sober and there, and that’s all that counts.”

I’ve come to the conclusion that the one sane and humane method to be a human being is to let individuals in restoration heal nonetheless they rattling nicely please. In the event that they need to yell and scream and curse the heavens, or weep and pray, or attend Alcoholics Nameless or Restoration Dharma, or make plenty of casseroles, or donate a kidney, or plant a backyard, or throw a Mary Kay occasion, or accumulate discontinued Lego units on eBay, or submit emo track lyrics, or embrace bizarre non secular practices, or submit offended rants on Fb, or gown up of their wedding ceremony gown like Miss Havisham, or get married in Vegas, or cover below the covers for 3 months straight, our job is to not decide them. Our solely job is to like them.

I’m now totally twice as outdated as I used to be that fateful summer season when Chandler and “Mates” carried me via the depths of despair and the slough of despond. At present, I’m more healthy. I’m happier. And on our oddly parallel journeys, Perry appeared happier, too. I wept after I noticed him within the 2021 “Mates” reunion. I celebrated when he launched his memoir, “Mates, Lovers, and the Large Horrible Factor.” I cheered his redemption arc with my entire coronary heart — as a result of Matthew Perry gave me mine.

Nonetheless an actor myself, I obtained a textual content from a good friend proper earlier than I walked onstage on Oct. 28 to carry out in an uproariously humorous laugh-out-loud comedy. Matthew Perry was discovered lifeless in a Jacuzzi, doubtless from cardiac arrest. It was a sucker punch to the intestine and a dagger to the guts. But when Matty may make ’em snigger via his tears, I may make ’em snigger via mine, too. He gave me my second act; the least I may do was give the viewers theirs.

“We inform ourselves tales so as to reside,” Joan Didion as soon as wrote. Matthew Perry’s tales had been a present to me at a time when the darkness got here to say me: indicators and signposts alongside the way in which, love letters from an unseen pen. I’m not one to get labored up about superstar deaths, however this one hit exhausting in methods I can’t even start to course of. I by no means met the person, however owe him a debt of gratitude I can by no means repay — one for which I’ll by no means get to thank him.

Relaxation nicely and fly with the angels, Miss Chanandler Bong. I hope you discover the peace you by no means discovered on this world however clawed your approach up from the depths looking for. Thanks for the present of laughter — and of life — your abilities gave me.

May you be any extra missed?

Donna Provencher is initially from Washington, D.C., and a transplant to San Antonio, Texas, the place she lives together with her companion, stepson, three sons and 4 rescue animals. She is a contract journalist, actor and director, recipient of Texas Star Reporter of the Yr (Class A) and two-time First Place Column Writing, West Texas Press Affiliation Journalist of the Yr, and an Alamo Theater Arts Council Globe Award for Finest Supporting Actress in a Comedy.

When you or somebody wants assist, name or textual content 988 or chat 988lifeline.org for psychological well being assist. Moreover, you’ll find native psychological well being and disaster sources at dontcallthepolice.com. Exterior of the U.S., please go to the Worldwide Affiliation for Suicide Prevention.

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