The Voices in My Head Will Not Stop, or, It's Cheaper Than Therapy.

Okay, let's talk about the elephant in the room. Let's talk about writing and mental health. More specifically; let's talk about writing and my mental health.

 
For years now, if anyone has taken the time (or been sufficiently interested) to ask me why I write, I've always given the seemingly flippant response that it keeps the voices at bay, those angry, sly noises in my head that start to get too loud if I stop writing for too long. For Christ's sake, I've even made it part of my author bio, and this blog post shares a title with my most recent short fiction collection.
 
Here's the thing though; When I say it, I'm only half joking.
 
Since we're friends by now (we are friends, right?) I feel like I can be a bit open with you, as well as honest. For quite some time now, probably longer than I was initially willing to admit, I've experienced fluctuations in my mental health. Usually nothing too major, you know, the usual ups and downs, mood swings. Or at least I preferred to tell myself that they were nothing too major.
 
Then, post-lockdown, the shit hit the fan, as a lifetime of sweeping things under the metaphorical carpet bubbled on up to the surface. As I think I've said in a previous post, it's funny how, probably like so many other people, I led myself to believe that lockdowns and isolation periods were perfect for getting shit done, a forced, perfect environment for creativity. Jesus, how wrong I was. Instead, those long, drawn-out days, weeks, months, gave rise to a festering sort of ennui, taken over by mundanity , a forced adaptation to the so-called New Normal, tempered with a grudging acceptance of what was and what wasn't allowed or feasible on a day-to-day basis. Creativity fell by the wayside, replaced by the obligatory getting by. The voices in my head, those same chattering muses that had helped feed my imagination, were now given free rein with nothing to vent them into. Negativity, self-doubt, insecurity, inferiority, boiled up from beneath a crusted old scab of my psyche, as every negative thought I'd ever had about myself in my life, was brought to the fore.
 
Depression: it's a strange word, with so many connotations. The people who experience it in its purest, worst form are usually the first to deny it...and the last to see it. It shouldn't be stigmatised and, although big steps have been made in recent years to erase that stigma, we're not there, not yet.
 
I crumbled, to a point where I was forced to the realisation that I needed help, some outside  assistance in mentally unpicking each of those little nagging insecurities that had dogged me for so many years and confronting them.
 
I wrote nothing for almost a year, my motivation drowned in a sea - a fucking ocean - of doubt and self-loathing, as the lack of creativity fed into my low self-belief, which in turn perpetuated my dwindling creativity, and so on. Oh, I dicked around with a work in progress that I'd picked up and put down several times. Hell, I even put together a collection of short fiction (Little Wounds), compiled from marginally reworked tales that I'd written before the shit hit the fan - an activity that was even more cathartic than usual, but not quite enough to stave off the black dog. Other than that, I had the very real worry that I was done, that I'd never have it in me to write again. I started to believe it was over, that I really was good for nothing in a creative sense.
 
There comes a moment of realisation. It's different for everyone of us, and it comes at a different time, a different stage in the process, but it's true what they say; nothing bad lasts forever. When you're going through a depressive episode, it's the last thing you want to hear, the last thing you find it possible to believe, but it's still true. It took an effort of will on my part, tempered with the right words from the right people, but I got there. I told myself that I was good enough, working on the understanding that, if I repeated it enough then, sooner or later, it might become true. I forced myself to write again, reluctantly at first, with difficulty. I told myself that it would help, that it would help me to find myself again, to listen to those voices and whip those little bastards into shape, to get them working for me again, rather than the other way around.
 
Then, little by little, in a way that I didn't even notice it at first, I was writing again. The words came, first in a trickle, then a stream, finally, a river. The ocean of self-doubt was backflowing, and it was about fucking time.
 
Those voices? I still hear them, but they're back where they belong now, working for me instead of against me. They needed a reminder, but they know their place again. It's a balance: I need them, but I also need them to remember where the hell they belong.
 
Last word for this time around: Fuck you, depression, I am good enough. Hell, I'm better than good enough. And to anyone who might happen to be reading this: So are you. Don't you ever fucking forget it, or worse, let anyone let you think or tell you otherwise.
 
Later, friends.
 
- L