Writing Blog Number 2

20240701 Writing Through Depression

Writing Through Depression

This one is a little personal, but I do think it is important to relate.
         See, I suffer from depression, PTSD and anxiety disorder. Been formally diagnosed and everything. No, I do not take medication; yes, I live in a country where I wouldn’t have to pay for it. Due to some physical injuries, I am also in pain 90% of the time. Sleep is apparently only an optional extra a lot of the time. I comfort eat, so am too fat. I don’t have a home, a job, a relationship, many friends IRL, and avoid social media except what I think my publishers want.
         So, with my life like this, and with no medication, how do I cope?
         Truth be told, not well. I could detail some of the things I’ve done, but that would bring the tone of this down even further.
         So, the main way I cope is thinking about my kids and trying to keep in touch with them. Yeah, seriously.
         But the way I have always coped with life sucking a testis is I write.
         To be able to sit down and write is something I have always done. When my mind does not want to do it, I force myself. And I will write literally anything in any genre. Whatever comes to mind. I tend not to write the here and now, but use the things I am going through in stories and poems, or write poetry about my past, or write essays about others in my situation, or work on novels where characters have elements of what I am going through (none are me because that character would be too hard for me to write and too hard for anyone to read). This has resulted in well over 500 unfinished items sitting on my computer hard drive (the folder is marked ‘Unfinished’) or in a cardboard box in the room I stay in, each story in its own C4 envelope. It has also seen hundreds (1000s?) of works finished. Because I am a nerd and keep a spreadsheet (which I have shared in the past), all the completed written work I have done and kept since 1983 adds up to over 8.3 million words. Then there are the numerous sketches, drawings, illustrations, cartoons, etc. I have also created. And then there is my photography. And let’s not forget the songs I’ve written music for.
         The thing about writing is that I enter a world that is not me. I can go into my fictional worlds and just leave this world behind. I can fight monsters, have guys trying to deal with witches, have fathers trying to find their daughters, have musicians lose themselves to a life they don’t own… yes, my stories tend to go everywhere. Despite being known as a horror writer (75% of my published work is horror or supernatural or at least dark), I am writing more and more out of that genre.
         I digress. The fact is I lose myself in writing. It is not this world and that is all that matters.
         That also means I do not think about myself. That means my depression is shunted to the back of my head. There is a focus on a part of me that is not the part that is forced to live in a nasty little police state; there is a part that can exist anywhere and that is where I go to.
         Writing is what enables me to cope. Because even when I am not writing physically, I am thinking about the 3, 4, 8, whatever stories I am currently working on, going back and forth between them in my head, working out where they go. I don’t plan, and I let my characters take over too often, but that is also a part of my coping mechanism. That joy of discovery is one of the very few joys I actually have.
         Without writing, I would not be here, in this world.
         And I mean that literally.
         Sure, this is not going to work for everyone, but my non-medicated, fat, ugly, old, depressed self finds that writing is what keeps him going.
         It is life. To me.