It’s Going to Be Okay: On Chris Gethard’s “Career Suicide” and Not Wanting to Be Alive
“Before I tell you anything else, I want you to know: I see a shrink, we’re good.”
This is the first thing Chris Gethard says in his HBO special (and subsequent comedy album) Career Suicide. It is also the obligatory sentiment that proceeds most discussions I have with friends about killing myself.
Like most transcendent comedy, Gethard’s comes from a place of truth. The brilliance in Gethard’s opening line lies not only in how it draws laughs for presuming the discomfort of his audience at the subject matter to follow, but also in how the line itself is a sendup of how we talk about mental health. Before anything else, make sure everyone else is okay.
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For most of my adult life, I’ve wanted to not be alive. To be clear, I don’t always have an active desire to die. It’s more of a low-level hum of wishing I didn’t exist. The only times this feeling is completely absent are the few days every six months or so when I feel like I not only need to exist, but that my existence is unbound by my human form.
On these occasions, I am certain I’m a god (or least a prophet) and that I know something about the world that I need to communicate to other humans (who are, of course, not really “other” but just an extension of me longing to connect with this physical version of me). I behave like I’m magic, and sometimes I am. I make wild connections about the world around me and sometimes they even prove true. I talk to strangers and attempt to convince them to marry that person, quit that job, leave that city, and in this case, thankfully, none of them do. This state of being, which I deeply enjoy, is met by my friends with caution and words like “unhinged,” “scary,” and the worst of them, “crazy.”
Within a few days, the manic episode subsides and I go back to not wanting to exist. And then I get to a point where I really don’t want to exist, and I become suicidal. At least a few times a year, I plot my escape from this mortal coil, and have the same conversation with my closest friends: “when this happens, you have to know that there’s nothing you could have done and that it’s not your fault.”
This does not go well. But it goes better than it used to now that my friends know I have an episodic mood disorder that my psychiatrist says is “somewhere between bipolar I and bipolar II” and causes acute bouts of hypomania and prolonged periods of depression. In addition to the psychiatrist, I see a therapist, keep myself physically healthy, and take medication to manage symptoms. So before you worry about me, know that I’m okay.
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Long before he had his own one-man show and subsequent HBO special, Chris Gethard was a well-known house performer at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. I moved to New York in 2008 primarily so that I could study improv at UCB. When I watched Gethard perform with his brainy, brilliant team The Stepfathers or as part of the free-wheeling ASSSSCAT show, I was moved by his ability and, perhaps more importantly, willingness to play the loser. With his shy demeanor, nasally voice, and [I wish there were a softer way to say this] physical appearance of geekiness, Gethard was a classic underdog. But rather than play a simpleton who was the butt of the joke, Gethard consistently found ways to bring a depth of humanity to his characters through surprising levels of vulnerability. This acting ability paired with his well of esoteric knowledge and deadpan comedic timing made me certain I was watching someone special, someone who was going to be a star simply because he made people feel big things.
A few years later, in April 2010, it was announced that Gethard would be starring in the Comedy Central sitcom Big Lake in a role that had been very publically vacated by Jon Heder, for whom it had been developed. Big Lake was notable because of the deal its production company, the Adam McKay and Will Ferrell-helmed Gary Sanchez Productions, had struck with the network: ten episodes up front, with the option to pick up an additional 90. With former-Saturday Night Live-stars Chris Parnell and Horatio Sanz attached, it seemed possible that Gethard would be staring on a flagship program on Comedy Central for most of the decade.
Of course, it didn’t happen like that. Gethard often relays a story that details how, on the day of a big press-blitz for the show, a broken doorknob forced him to escape out the window of his Queens apartment, ultimately landing him atop a heap of trash bags. As he spoke with interviewers and publicists, he thought, A few hours ago you were thigh deep in garbage. Don’t forget who you are.
In 2012, Gethard wrote an earnest and vulnerable response to a fan who’d anonymously asked about suicide on Gethard’s Tumblr. In his response, Gethard recounts many of the stories that later because the centerpieces of Career Suicide. He repeatedly tells the fan how much he cares, insists that things will get better, and concludes the lengthy reply by saying, “I got your back.” Gethard may joke that he is a “garbage person,” but this is who he really is: a person who cares deeply enough to drop everything and make sure someone else is okay.
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In Career Suicide, Gethard talks about his struggle with depression, with not knowing which version of himself he’ll wake up as. It’s a feeling I’m far too familiar with. I was once accidentally included on an email chain wherein a close friend, anticipating my attendance at an event, said, “Let’s hope he’s on and not moody.” I knew exactly what she meant.
These are some of the other words people have used to describe me being “on”: “charismatic,” “engaged,” “up,” “happy,” “the good version.” Here are some words they’ve used for “moody”: “pouty,” “mopey,” “aloof,” “stoic,” “depressed.”
Of course I wanted to be “on.” I knew that when I was mentally engaged — and especially when I was manic — I was the center of the scene, someone people wanted to be around. Likewise, I knew how people felt about being around me when I was depressed, and I was depressed a lot more often than I was manic. Though friends would say they understood (and I believe that they did), it was clear that it wasn’t very fun to be around someone who didn’t want to be there because he didn’t want to be anywhere at all. My friendships, my career, and my physical health all reflected these swings. It was not very sustainable.
Though I’d seen therapists for most of my twenties, I was resistant to taking medication for my disorder. Like so many others, I held tight to the notion that there was something special about me, that these intense feelings, this existential dread was not something to be problematized and medicated away, but rather a sign of genius and a condition to be wrestled with until I “figured it out.”
As someone who fancied himself a writer and a performer, I was doubly sure that medications would threaten the very things that I felt had made me stand out. Gethard details a similar struggle in his special, admitting that he feared losing his ideas if he took medication and challenging the tendency of media critics to romanticize the creativity myth that connects deep sorrow with meaningful work.
To dispel the notion that his mental illness was helpful to his comedy, Gethard rattles off a list of ideas he’d had in fits of mania. They are, of course, terrible ideas (it should be noted that Gethard wrote a book of personal essays entitled A Bad Idea I’m About to Do). I too have (and retain) an attachment to the projects I birthed during manic episodes. Those include a short film I convinced my friends to help me produce wherein I play a silent game of tic-tac-toe against a “fatter version of me,” continually ending in a “cat’s game,” until it all descends into madness, existential ranting, and self-harm; announcing on Twitter that I was going to sing the entirety of Destroyer’s 2006 album Destroyer’s Rubies acapella and from memory in a public park and then actually doing it, refusing to break when onlookers attempted to engage me; and, perhaps most troubling, pitching a “performance art” piece to an esteemed art museum, the crux of which was that I would eat 100 pieces of cake over 100 hours in an enclosed, windowless, bathroom-less room that museum guests would not be allowed to enter, all in honor of the museum’s 100th anniversary (they passed).
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My psychiatrist tells me that many of his patients with some form of bipolar disorder love their mania, often even when it becomes destructive. What is less enjoyed, and certainly less discussed, is how attached a person can become to deep depression and suicidal tendencies. I can’t recall a time in my life when I didn’t think about dying, and this has never struck me as particularly problematic. On the contrary, I’ve truthfully taken it to mean that I live a more considered life than those who never mull over their options. All great philosophers, poets, and literary giants predict or echo Camus: “The only serious question in life is whether to kill yourself or not.”
Gethard’s therapist, Barb, tells him: “Your reactions to things are not in proportion to the things you’re reacting to.” I want to say to Barb: “My heart is so full; just let me get it out.”
I’m aware this might be a case of my brain rationalizing and justifying how an otherwise-healthy individual can be so driven towards death. But being limited as we all are to only one life, only one set of experiences, and only one brain, I genuinely can’t tell. Like Kayne, “I just feel like I’m the only one not pretendin’.”
Still, I think feelings must be mentionable if they are to be manageable. Yet discussing suicide in any specific sense is deeply unsettling for those listening. It’s one of the cruel ironies of feeling existentially alone that talking about it only confirms the feeling. Friends who would support me in my craziest ideas (see above) refuse to give any ground when it comes to the topic of suicide. And once the subject has been broached, constant inquiries of “How are you?” dot every interaction. How am I? I’m a child falling down, and everyone asking me if I’m okay means that I must not be. After returning from a trip that entailed me being phoneless for a few days, I quipped to a friend, “In modernity, you can make people think you’ve killed yourself just by turning off your phone for a few days.” To which he (fairly, I suppose) responded, “And by generally talking and acting like a person who would kill themselves in the preceding decade.”
In one particularly vulnerable story featured in Career Suicide, Gethard recounts a car accident he purposely choose not to avoid. “We don’t judge people when they die in car crashes, but we do judge people when they die of suicide.” Given the general reluctance to even allow each other to discuss suicide openly, it’s no surprise that suicidal individuals fret the legacy they leave for their families and friends. Gethard says he didn’t want his parents to be seen around town as the parents of a kid who killed himself. Before anything else, make sure everyone else is okay.
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In the last minutes of Career Suicide, Gethard notes how his life changed after penning that response to a suicidal fan. He talks about the thousands of people, many of them very young, who contact him looking for help. Through tears, he tells the audience what he tells those who reach out to him: “You don’t get to pick what breaks you, you really don’t get to predict what saves you, but please: keep your eyes peeled for it, because I bet it’s out there, and I bet you can find it, because I found mine. And I never dreamed I’d be strong enough to say that.” It is obviously a highly unorthodox way to end a comedy special. It is also obviously an effective and fresh use of the medium that only Gethard could deliver with such earned sincerity.
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These days, Gethard is the host of a raucous late-night variety show that bears his name, currently airing on truTV. What makes The Chris Gethard Show work is the spirit of its circus leader. Even amidst extremely silly bits, Gethard always remains firmly on the side of the audience, the guests, and those that call- or Skype-in to the show. He often makes appeals directly to the camera, advocating for a realness not found elsewhere on television. He makes clear that the program is about trying and failing, always offers himself as the most-willing participant in the madness, and embodies the show’s moto: “Lose well.”
In an almost-too-perfect case of symmetry, a 2016 episode of TCGS entitled “One Man’s Trash” consisted entirely of cast members, callers, and guests Jason Mantzoukas and Paul Scheer trying to guess the contents of an onstage dumpster. A writer on Vulture called it “the single most enjoyable hour of TV I experienced this year,” and in 2017, Uproxx ran a lengthy oral history on the episode. It was, without a doubt, just as insane, silly, and potentially dumb as the ideas Gethard recalls from his manic period. But it was carried out with a sense of earnestness, presentness, and pure joy that has come to mark Gethard’s work.
In the aforementioned 2012 piece, Gethard tells his anonymous fan something I’ve thought about most days over the past five years:
We feel things harder than other people do, and when those things are negative they are complete and total torture. But while we feel pain harder than other people have to, we feel beauty and joy and love harder than anyone else gets to, and that’s the victory that’s waiting on the other side of this pain for you. Hang on. Be tough. Better times are coming.
It’s hard to talk about suicide and, I can tell you from personal experience, even harder to talk about onstage under the guise of comedy. In Career Suicide, Gethard pulls it off because he truly believes that it’s worth wrestling with, and he’s experienced life on the other side. My therapist often talks about one’s capacity for feeling as a bubble: push too hard in any specific direction and it might break, but with gentle nudging in any direction — painful, joyful, or otherwise — one can expand the entire bubble. So while I still feel like not existing sometimes, I’ve also managed to lean into the times when life feels almost heartbreakingly vibrant. Like Gethard, I’ve found better ways to talk about my own mental health and, with the right treatment and a willingness to wait out the difficult times, I can finally make sure I’m okay.
