The Suicidal Pilot
Truthfully, I probably would not have cared so much about the shitty thing that Lubitz did, on March 24, 2015.
But, I was literally stranded on a desert island thousands of miles across the ocean from home, when he crashed the plane.
Now, stranded is a relative term, the island was Hawaii and I could only be less stranded while being on a desert island if I was in Australia.
But that is where I received the parcel of hate that he chose to deliver to my meme mailbox.
That elephant part of the brain that never forgets, yet we call it the Hippocampus.
Wouldn’t that be a crowded university?
And knowing that I needed to fly home with my 2 daughters, ages 3 and 5, in less than a week, meant I was going to binge watch the entire miniseries, ping ponging between a fox, an spf, and a cnn.
While it was a mystery on TV I knew early why he splattered a plane, and 150 living, breathing, loving people, into a Jackson Pollock original.
I knew why he painted the wall of a new gallery of death.
He loved to fly and he hated to be sad. He loved what he loved, in his mind, more than you love what you love.
He made the calculation that since his career was off his Bucket List, 150 people that contributed to his sadness in no way would pay.
He then exchanged a B for an F and practiced relaxation exercises, so no one would think he was scared, for about 8 minutes.
There is no such thing as ‘clinical depression’.
There is the diagnosis your Doctor gives you and then there are the diagnoses we give ourselves.
Depression is different from sadness. Depression sucks. Its worst feature is not the re-wallpapering of your mind into a square you constantly circle. Or that you are even more afraid to leave this dark room, because it’s even worse out there.
The worst feature is after a while, you want to die, but your body doesn’t self-destruct.
So then you get suicidal. And here is where your personality finally gets a say.
How do you want to kill yourself?
My first experience with suicide happened about 20 years ago, when my friend told me he came home and found his pilot father hanging and my mind went blank after that.
There are some sentences you hear in your life, cnacer (correct spelling) is one of them, that act like instantaneous ROHYPNOL is coursing through your brain.
Once back online, I processed the story learning that if you have depression and you are a pilot, you are likely to lose your career.
And if you have depression, but it is well controlled on an antidepressant medication, you are likely to lose your career.
That passengers is the secret that they struggle with.
You may argue that there are selfish sides to suicide, like there are selfish sides to suffering.
There certainly are more and less selfish ways in how you go about actually ending your life.
I realize to him the pressurized cabin of feigning happiness was becoming overwhelming.
I imagine him that morning; sitting in his kitchen, drinking coffee on self appointed death row. Shredding the doctor’s note, excusing him from school that day.
He has finished his homework, but he is still not good enough.
He thinks he is not enough of a man, to be a Pilot, as if gender matters. His sharp spurs are worn down; his 10 Gallon Hat is on fumes.
But instead of healing on the Homestead; he wraps his noose, around the bull, that keeps bucking him.
And as he’s tearing the plane into little fragments, he’s thinking about the slaughter in its carriage.
The meat luggage of strangers he does not care about.
Unsaddling his daily resolve he has given himself permission to be afraid and alone.
And only then is he truly weak.
His next domino is selfishness and then tragedy.
_____
It’s not Lubitz, it’s the mask that we really have to worry about.
That social costume that helps us hide from the scary stigma.
We wear it so we are not judged.
The mask keeps alive those childhood dreams flying as teens, marveling at adult engines.
But hopes crumble when the mask breaks, dashed like salt and pepper on the side of a hill.
_____
I want Marty McFly to appear, so I can go back and talk to Lubitz.
I don’t want this feeling of hate that he has projected into me.
His last tantrum in a world where he did not get all the toys that he wanted, so he took his plane away.
I want to know the shape of the face of the Woodsman with the axe, even though the goods were never delivered.
I want to meet all the people that he killed and tell them not to fly that weekend or to live their life like they are going to die at 35, or soon after 35,000 ft.
I want to plead with him not to usher down the aisle of his mind this villain, who is to take the final curtain call of his polymorphous perverse existence.
Not him, not now.
But what I really want to tell him, is that I know he was suffering alone.
I know there are Narcissistic aspects to depression and even suicide.
I wish he knew that he did not have to lock himself in the cockpit of his lonely life.
Rather, he has the human right to say, ‘I am a Pilot, and I have depression. I hate that it takes from me my very ability to find joy and meaning in my life, so I have chosen to have it treated’.
‘And if my doctor tells me that I need time off to heal from an episode?
Then, just like every other illness, I have that right, without the fear that my job, career, or dream is up in the air’.
Because I don’t want to be a suicidal Pilot.
Simon Trepel, MD
Simon Trepel, MD FRCPC, is a practicing Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, in Winnipeg, Canada. He is an Assistant Professor, at the University Of Manitoba, in the Faculty of Medicine, and the Co-founder of the GDAAY Clinic. He is, more importantly, the proud Father of 2 beautiful Daughters. He writes in his spare time about things he knows something about, and occasionally about things he doesn’t; like Yoga, and Italian flavored coffees. He was not referring to coffee that tastes like an Italian person.
Check out his Blog, called Simon Says Psych Stuff, at
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