Writing depression (and living it, too)
It's interesting to me how, when you're feeling at your very lowest, you are able to produce much better art.
2014 was a giant pile of bullshit, and my spouse and I went through a hell of a time. There was a big vat of depression on both sides, a serious lack of communication, and generally feeling like it was the end. For spouse, it very well could have been.
About a year ago, we went to California for what I had hoped would be a shot in the arm, to shake off the grumpiness and try to get back to liking one another. It didn't work. We were both miserable; he was surly and unresponsive, and I felt like the psycho harpy girlfriend who nags and whines and needs every scrap of attention. I'm not that person, and neither is he. We wouldn't have ended up together if we had been those people. So what was happening?
Turns out, after a series of jokes that turned out not to be jokes at all and were, in fact, veiled cries for help, we sought help. We sought help from an absolutely terrible marriage counselor, who sided with me about everything even when I was the one being an asshole. It was a nightmare. We hemorrhaged money that we didn't have so that we could go and talk to a loathsome woman as she scraped over half-healed wounds and poured in lemon juice and fecal material. We became more and more miserable, and both of us had some very bad ideas.
I was unemployed; I was mooching off of an overworked and underappreciated spouse who I thought hated me; I had wasted two years of my life getting a degree that I was certainly never going to use for anything; I was worthless, and I knew it;
I don't know how I feel about the fact that it fueled my emotional basis for my book. I hid in coffee shops and in my bedroom, typing furiously and dreaming and crying and leaving my own head for days at a time. I channeled my frustration and my fear and my anger and grief at a marriage I thought was dissolving into my characters. I made them feel what I was feeling and I let myself feel with their hearts and think with their brains. It was much better than doing it in my own. My own brain was full of filth, so if I could catch it from different angles, I could work through it. I was obsessed with the people in my head, and it helped me to survive. I saw them everywhere, bits of their physical appearance or the tones of their voices in everyday conversation. They taught me how to grieve, and how to care for someone who is on the brink.
I knew that I was loved and protected, and that saved me. My circle of friends is tiny and as thoroughly curated as the Louvre, and I have a family who would ride into Hel's living room to protect me. I never reached the point of the dagger, but there were two sides to this story. The other half of me, my spouse, was slipping;
I end these with semicolons because it was not the end. We talked; we cried; we talked some more; we found a counselor; spouse found help and I helped him; it was not the end; It was only the beginning.
It's a year later now. We went back to California, and I didn't write a single word while I was there. I have to work much harder at writing these days. I would like to blame it on my job (which is probably the most rewarding thing I have ever done but is exhausting), but I think that the real reason I'm having trouble writing is because I am finally happy again. I am in love with that person I married; we talk and laugh and smile again; I write vignettes and short stories that would make a hummingbird become a diabetic (frankly they are so saccharine that I refuse to even save them to my computer, so you won't be seeing them here). If that's the price of having writer's block and working harder to finish my stories, it's completely worth it.
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If you or someone you care about is having issues with depression or is having thoughts of suicide, please call 1 (800) 273-8255 or go to suicidepreventionlifeline.org. There is no shame in it. There is nothing wrong with you. It is hard and painful to talk, but you are loved and you are cared for and the world is less without you. No art is worth losing you.
