The Impact of Listening: Kevin Berthia (Full Transcript)

Full text of suicide prevention advocate Kevin Berthia’s talk: The Impact of Listening at TEDxUCDavisSF conference.

Listen to the MP3 Audio here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Kevin Berthia – Suicide survivor

How is everybody doing?

Let me first say how grateful I am to be here today, and let me say how honored I am to be in your presence.

My name is Kevin Berthia, and I am a grateful survivor.

Hal Lindsey said that:

“A man can live for about forty days without food, three days without water, eight minutes without air, but for just one second without hope.”

Listen to what I say; one second without hope.

I was diagnosed with a congenital mental depression disorder at age 19, but my battle with mental depression started as early as age five. Early in my childhood, I felt like I was the only one who grew up or lived without any type of happiness or hope when they woke up.

It was difficult for me when I grew up to cope with different things. I felt like I was different; I felt like I wasn’t normal. But I knew I had to do everything possible to look and feel as normal as I could.

Where I live, your reputation is everything. So I had to do whatever it took to look and feel as normal as I could look, no matter how I felt on the inside.

Everything changed for me in 2002, two years after I graduated high school. This is when I had my first real nervous breakdown. I was hospitalized. I remember coming home from the hospital, and I told myself, “I will never talk about anything that got me hospitalized.” I didn’t believe anything that the doctors told me.

Depressed?

I didn’t even know what depression was; I didn’t know what depression meant. I knew I didn’t have it; I knew I was normal, and I was fine.

In my eyes, that day that I had a nervous breakdown… I’d just simply had a bad day. Everything was okay. I did everything possible to tell myself that I was normal; that I felt normal, that I acted normal.

2002 summer changed everything for me. That mental breakdown caused me to look at myself with a totally different eye than I have ever looked at before. I was defeated, I was depressed, I was overwhelmed. I wasn’t even able to understand with the things that I was going through.

How could I be so unhappy? How could I be so depressed? How could I have the weight of the world on me already so early in life?

Six months after my 21st birthday, I welcomed my first child into the world. [Sanaya Amar]; she was everything to me. It was the happiest and saddest day of my life. It was the happiest day because as a father, watching your first child come into the world is the greatest feeling that you could ever imagine.

But to watch her come out two and a half months early, premature, two pounds and only three ounces, I could fit her in the palm of my hands. This was overwhelming.

The next time I saw my daughter, she was in a glass incubator, with tubes running off through in and out of her mouth. She needed one to breathe, she needed one to eat.

As a father, I felt like a failure because my baby girl was going through so much, so early in life. It was overwhelming for me. For the next eight weeks, I went up there every single day. And every single day I went up there and looked in that box and I said, “I wish it was me in that glass, and not her. Why does she have to go through so much, so early in life?”

I wanted her just to get better. I wanted her to eat right, just so that doctors could release her and send her home. That’s all I wanted. I wanted her home so I could experience having the privilege of being a father for the first time.

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That’s all I wanted.

I remember when she came home after those eight weeks, when they finally released her; I remember the feeling, how I felt. I remember going to the fire department and make sure they installed the car seat safely. I was the happiest father on earth. I was bringing my baby girl home.

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Once I got her home, it was the greatest feeling I ever could imagine. It was everything I ever wanted. Every possible wrong thing that happened in my life was now replaced, now I was a father.

Now I had even more responsibilities. Now my responsibility was being a provider, and I wanted my child to have everything. Anything and everything that she wanted, I wanted her to have. No matter what it took, I was going to get it for her.

Three weeks after my daughter came home, I received a piece of mail in a mail that changed my life forever. This letter was a bill for my daughter’s stay. It totaled up to $225,000 for my daughter’s eight week stay at the hospital. I was overwhelmed. It was like a car had landed on my chest, it was an indescribable pain.

How could I come up with this type of money? How was I ever going to be able to come up with $225,000? I’d just got over dealing with, and still dealing with, the fact that she was born early. I am a new father, I’m excited, I’m still dealing with the emotions of that.

Now I’m having to deal with figuring out how I’m going to pay this doctor’s bill. How am I going to come up with this money in order to provide for my daughter? Impossible task in my head. Impossible task.

Three weeks went by, and I saw no hope. Things weren’t getting better.

Another two months went by, and I got even more news. More painful news. My daughter needed a hernia surgery. Not only did she have to endure all of this coming out, having to go through eight weeks in an incubator, and eight weeks on a feeding tube.

Now she had to go through a hernia surgery. And then I found out that my job, that I wanted so badly to transfer from, they decided they wanted to lay me off. So now I don’t have a job, I am dealing with trying to cope with the different elements of learning how to be a new father, learning how to be a man, learning how to deal with more responsibilities.

As my responsibilities increased, so did my illness. I was unable to deal with certain things. It was difficult for me to even cope with simple things. I was overwhelmed. I stopped eating, I stopped sleeping. I stayed up all night, worrying and wondering, “How could I have got to this point? How did I get here? What do I do now?”

I blamed myself. I felt like there should be something that I could do to fix this situation. I’d been superman my whole life. I’ve always had an answer to all of my problems. No matter how depressed I’ve gotten, I have never gotten too bad, or too far to where I couldn’t snatch myself up.

It never was this bad.

But I had nothing to do. I had nothing, no way of coming out of this one this time. I owed people money; I had no way of paying it.

Christmas came around. I couldn’t even afford to buy my daughter something for Christmas. This is our first Christmas and I had to let her down, by not even being able to be financially stable enough to afford a Christmas gift for her. Not sure anybody knows how it feels to not be able to provide for your daughter on Christmas, one of the most important kid holidays there is.

What do I do now? How do I cope with the fact that I have lost pretty much everything? How do I cope with the fact that I’m overwhelmed?

March 11, 2005. I woke up at 4:42 AM. In excruciating pain. Pain I had never felt in my life before. Pain that I never even could see coming. Sure, I’ve had bad days, I have had plenty of bad days, but not a day like this. It’s like every single painful moment that I have ever went through in my life, I was dealing with at the same time.

And at that moment, I lost hope. At that moment, I made a decision, that if life was going to be this hard, I don’t want to be a part of it. I needed the pain to end. I wanted the pain to end. I finally got tired of sitting there.

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So I went to my car. I got in, and drove. No real destination. I just knew I had to stop and get myself out of pain. I knew I had to stop. And stop feeling the way I felt; I was too overwhelmed.

At this point, I made a decision that I was going to end my life by any means possible. I went to the local gas station, put enough gas in there not to really get anywhere, just to get where I thought I was going to get.

And as I sat there at the pump, I thought to myself, “What could I do to ensure that this pain would end? Where could I go to make sure that I will get out of the pain?”

At that moment, I decided to drive from Oakland to the Golden Gate Bridge. I’ve never even been to the Golden Gate Bridge. I never knew it was iconic for committing suicide.

But I knew I was tired, I had to get myself out of pain. I remember like it was yesterday; I remember driving to the bridge, stopping at the toll, and I remember asking the lady for directions. In my mind, I wish she would just ask me, “Why were you going to the bridge?”

But she didn’t, so I proceeded on my way. I knew now I was just 20 minutes from it all being over. From all the pain, from all the agony, for all the times that I had to put up a front for the world, for all the times I had to say, “I’m okay.” I knew all that will be over, just 20 minutes.

Surprisingly, the closer I got to the bridge, the better I felt. I was happy to have some type of plan. The closer I got, the better I felt.

20 minutes went by, and I approached the north tower. I remember parking in the visitor section, parking my car, and I immediately hopped out. I reached the conclusion that I was here for a reason. And nothing else could stop me, I was here to get myself out of pain.

I was tired, I was overwhelmed, and I was done trying. I was done waiting for, “Let’s see tomorrow, let’s see if it gets better”. Everything in my head was telling me, “We’ve been to tomorrow, we’ve seen tomorrow, and tomorrow is not getting any better. It’s only getting worse, Kevin.”

As I walked out onto the bridge, there was people everywhere. Tourists, people with their families, and all I could think about is, “Do I really want to do this?”

But I had more reasons to do it, than to not do it. I had more reasons to be there and jump, than to stay and keep going.

Once I got to a good place, where I felt like this was the place, I remember I took two steps back, and I closed my eyes. I contemplated. But I told myself, “Kevin, you have been in this pain too long, and you need to do what you have to do; you came here for a job.”

As I stepped back, I took one last breath, and as I started to walk forward to the gate, I remembered the railing. And I knew my pain was going to be over, if I could just get over that railing, if I could just get in that water, everything would be fine.

As I approached the gate, as I approached the rail, and I hoisted myself, I heard a voice that stopped me neat in the air. I turned around, and I stationed myself on this core, that I barely could fit on my feet.

At this point, I was frustrated. I had come here to do a job and, to me, I not only was a failure in life, I was a failure at that moment to not even complete the task.

I found myself standing there, contemplating, I put my head down. I closed my eyes, I never looked up. I could hear the voice talking to me, but I was in no situation, in no position, mentally or physically, as you can see, to answer any questions.

The voice got closer; my emotions got all over the place. As I stood there, I thought about every single thing that I did wrong in my life. Every wrong thing that happened to me, whether I realized that it bothered me or not, I felt it at that moment.

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With the wind on my back, I’m freezing cold, it’s unbearable. I tell myself, “I have to go. All I have to do at this point is let go; I’m not holding on. Nothing is keeping me here, nothing is holding me up. All I have to do, Kevin, is let go, and everything is over. You’re out of pain, Kevin, it’s that easy.”

My one second of hope that I lost, I am four seconds from my day, from it all being over. “This is it!” I thought.

The moment I decided to let go, the same voice that stopped me before, I heard again, but this time it was a lot closer. Not sure what he was saying, but the fact that somebody took the time out, and was saying anything at this particular moment, where I was at my worst possible situation in life, they took the time to try to talk to me.

I kept my head down. I never looked up at it. I was just happy to know that this voice, this non-judgmental voice was there, and it was listening to me.

For 92 minutes, I stood in the same position on that bridge, with my head down, and I told a complete stranger some of the most intimate things of my life. For 92 minutes, he just listened.

It’s not about what he said that day that saved my life. It’s about what he listened to, because he listened to me. He was able to channel in to what was really my hurt, and what brought me to the bridge in the first place.

The fact that how much I have failed as a person, how I failed as a father, he made me realize that day that I needed to be there. My daughter’s first birthday was the next month. I needed to be there for her first birthday, regardless of how I felt, I needed to be there.

He listened to me, and he gave me the courage to come back. It gave me the courage to realize that maybe I can give this thing another shot. He listened to everything I said in detail, and him, listening, saved my life.

He listened to me. And because this man listened to me, I was able to reunite with him, eight years after that critical day. Because this man listened to me, I was able to become a father, not to only one child, but two more.

I am now the lucky man of three children now, because this man listened to me. I am able to be a suicide prevention advocate now, and I get to travel around the country, and spread my message of hope to other individuals that get to listen to me.

The impact of listening saved my life. Everybody in this room has the ability to save a life. It may not be to do with certain things that you think, but you listening, can save a life. You listening can impact a life. Those two ears you have, they are a gift. They are a gift; they can save somebody’s life.

They say a picture’s worth a thousand words. Here is your proof, this is your proof right here. I thank you for your time and I thank you for listening.