Please Stop Romanticizing Depression
Pithy creativity posts, self-diagnoses, and prescriptive “cure-alls” are not the move.
Let me tell you about the time I wanted to die. Daylight had become an assault, and moving from one room to another required a passport, luggage set, and a trip on three planes. In the blue hour, I’d walk along the shoreline near my home, inching closer to the water. My body was a ticker tape of grief.
What would it be like to walk into the water, through it, under it? Instead, I returned to the box that was my home — the door served as a little grid where no light could get in. Watch me pour white wine into mugs for breakfast while laughing through Salò. Back then, I considered a film about sadism a comedy. Watch my body wracked with sobs on the bathroom floor, kitchen floor, bedroom floor, in front of the TV. Watch me watch Salò again because maybe I have it better than someone else? Maybe someone feels more pain? Is it possible when your sadness is bottomless and unrelenting.
Nine years ago, I had all this pain and I didn’t know where to put it. Where do you store pain when it threatens to swallow you whole? Do you put it in a box, a body, a container? Do you keep it at room temperature or locked in the freezer?
