There doesn’t need to be a fire
This introductory piece has, for better or worse, been a long time in the writing. I’ve known exactly what it is I’ve wanted to write about for many months now, but how to write about it has eluded me completely. I’m wary of sounding ungrateful for my current lot in life - especially as I know that many people have it much, much worse than I do - however I also have a suspicion that the thoughts I’ve been having are not unique to me, and if even one other person feels seen or heard by this somehow, then just getting it down and putting it out there will have been worthwhile.
Because - and this is another thing I will probably go into in more detail over time - I have also discovered, or rediscovered, that writing and sharing this writing with people is something I just need to do. It’s something I need to do the way some people need to run, or meditate, or lower themselves into a big bucket of ice. So here I am, writing and sharing it with people, again. I’ve come and gone from writing on the internet several times over the last decade or so, but this time I plan to stay, irrespective of what else comes up.
And now that the throat-clearing is out of the way (for now at least) we may begin.
Just before Christmas, I made the decision to stop going to therapy. Not because I’m all better now or anything, but because I realised it wasn’t helping me anymore. This is not to impugn my therapist and her considerable skill, as she was and no doubt still is brilliant, however the very act of going to a particular person at a particular time and talking at them about my innermost thoughts for fifty or so minutes just doesn’t seem to work for me the way it once did. I found that I kept waiting for that breakthrough moment - the lightning bolt, the switch-flip, the tears I never really cry but assume must be stored in there somewhere finally rattling themselves loose - but nothing ever really happened. So I quit. I can’t even necessarily remember why I’d started going again in the first place.
When what you’ve been dealing with is more an absence of feeling than anything else, it can be fiendishly difficult to describe - and I say this as someone who likes words. So in order to explain what’s been going on (or not going on) in my head, I am on this occasion going to defer to my past self.
Towards the end of last year, I cracked open a book called The Artist’s Way. You may already be familiar with it, but if not, it’s essentially a twelve-week course designed to help you discover and recover your creative self. The main tool that The Artist’s Way promotes and encourages you to take up is the morning pages - this is basically three pages of free-association writing which you sit down and do each morning before you do anything else. One morning in October, I was feeling particularly desperate, and because writing is a largely low-cost endeavour (especially compared to private therapy) I thought I’d give it a go.
This isn’t a plug for The Artist’s Way or the morning pages procedure, great though they both may be, but I thought I’d better provide context for the following passage, which was written on Saturday 14th October 2023 and was notably never intended for public consumption. That said, it encapsulates the feeling behind this piece and what has led me here rather well.
“Generally speaking, I do not feel great at the moment. I’m lacking in energy, I’m indifferent to everything, and because I can’t tell if I’m depressed, exhausted, or suffering with some hitherto undiagnosed neurodiversity, I also don’t know how to go about making myself feel better. This is part of why I’m reading The Artist’s Way, and starting my morning pages, because I’ve always considered myself a creative person and I hope that unlocking that lost creativity in me will go some way towards helping me feel better. I certainly can’t buy my way out of it (I’ve tried), or achieve my way out of it (also tried), and although I can lessen it by getting out of my usual surroundings, it’s still always there, in the background, like an annoying humming noise you can neither place nor switch off.”
Now, I’m sure I speak on behalf of everyone when I say that the last few years have been a lot. This March marks four years since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic (or the UK ‘edition’ of it anyway), and although I know this, objectively and mathematically, I also cannot comprehend that it is as long ago as that. I note that I had a particularly inauspicious start to 2020, experiencing the break-up of a relationship (which was largely not my decision) and the abrupt dismissal from my then job (also, perhaps unsurprisingly, not my decision) within the space of a few days. While I can laugh ruefully about it all now - after all, what kind of cursed creature has both of these things happen in the same week? - I can still vividly remember how terrible I felt at the time. It was not good.
Throughout most of 2020 and 2021, what buoyed my spirits was a belief that, beyond the darkness and hideousness of it all, there would be so much to look forward to on the other side. And this was mostly true. But attached to this were some slightly sketchier beliefs: once I finish this Masters, I’ll be happy; once I get a job and start earning actual money, I’ll be happy; once this relationship rights itself, I’ll be happy; once the world is back to normal and I can do more of the things I love, I’ll be happy.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful that everything I’ve alluded to above eventually righted itself in the end. But in all of this ‘if X, then Y’ thinking, I hadn’t stopped to consider Z: that I would still be taking my brain along with me. It took me until the end of 2022, almost a year into a job I loved and with all sorts of positives to ostensibly celebrate, to realise that, crisis or no, pandemic or no, my brain is just…my brain. Despite my best efforts, it seems to like to focus on the negative, the perceived lack, the dark over the light. It wasn’t always like this - I wasn’t always like this - but this has sadly been the case for most of my adult life. It’s the annoying humming noise I can neither place nor switch off.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I have the brain of a depressed person, as much as I hate to admit it. And that’s not to say I feel depressed all the time - if you’d asked me at any point during January, for example, I’d have said I was feeling pretty positive, as odd as that may be for January - but a lot of the time it’s like my brain is just set to: negative. I don’t really know how else to describe it. I also don’t understand it - on paper there is no reason for me to be depressed. In my circle of friends, there are people who have lost loved ones recently, including at criminally young ages; there are people whose parents or partners are undergoing treatment for cancer; even people, around my age, who are being treated for it themselves. I’m fortunate that nothing of the sort is happening to me at present. So why am I the depressed one?
Now if you’re reading this and thinking, ‘but hey, that’s not how depression works!’, then believe me, I know. I know, and yet, despite being able to extend every courtesy to other people who are suffering for no readily identifiable reason, I make no comparable allowances for myself. And despite first being diagnosed with depression a little over fourteen years ago and having also taken antidepressant medication for the majority of that time, I still have a hard time admitting - even to myself - that depression is something I suffer from. But it is. Just because I’ve grown accustomed to the annoying humming noise doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
Over the last year or so I’ve come to realise that, sometimes, there doesn’t need to be a fire. Everything can be going well, all the pieces can be falling into their intended places, and to a third party observer things can seem absolutely fine - great, even. But inside it can often be a wildly different story. I have this on good authority, as this has been me for nearly half of my life now.
Fortunately, alongside these more unsettling realisations - that I have a brain that tends towards darkness, that therapy no longer seems to remedy the issue, and that the ‘if…then’ approach to happiness is largely a fallacy - I do ultimately have something positive to report in that I’ve realised what really does work for me. And that’s writing. Or, even more broadly, having a creative outlet of some sort. That’s what this piece, and this website, and all the other things I’ve thought about but haven’t yet willed into being are/will be about.
When I think about the times in my life where I’ve felt truly happy (or even just content, really) I note that I was creating pretty much all the time. It’s like the opposite of a vicious circle: I’m happy because I create, and I create because I’m happy. Whereas more recently - or at least before I decided to revive this website and my writing with it - it was much more a case of: I’m miserable because I’m not creating anything, and I’m not creating anything because I’m miserable. This can be an extremely difficult cycle to break out of, as creating things requires action, and being in a depressed state doesn’t often inspire action.
While I must reiterate that I am not on the payroll of the team behind The Artist’s Way, I really do credit the book and the whole morning pages protocol for slowly but surely unblocking me creatively, and for leading me out of a despair so insidious I almost didn’t realise I was in it. I’ve kept the ritual up far beyond the initial twelve weeks they recommend, and I don’t plan on stopping any time soon. Getting my thoughts down on the page first thing every morning helps me think more clearly and feel better equipped to go about my day, and I’m sure it makes me a better writer too. (Although, if you disagree, you can always let me know. Maybe.)
Before I go, I’d like to reassure you all that not every piece published on this website will be as heavy as this; some will be, some might even be worse, however you can also expect a lot of levity. Alongside explorations of depression, grief, and perfectionism somehow being thought of as positive despite being one of the most debilitating things a person can suffer from, you can also expect pieces on, for example, where to find the best coffee in Paris, and what does and doesn’t hold up from The O.C. twenty years on (yes, it really is twenty years on, and no, you are not alone in feeling like a fossil). I also plan on branching into video content soon but, for now, you’ll find me hiding behind and simultaneously revealing myself through the written word.
Thank you for your time. It’s good to be back.
This piece was written during February and March 2024.