Hi,
This is my first post, and I really wasn’t sure what to say, but I’ve written myself into a sort of stupor today, so I guess I’ll just say something.
I’ve lived with major depression for most of my life. I can’t remember a time when my baseline emotional state wasn’t some level of self loathing, worry, and confusion. So I’m having the strangest experience right now, because I’m not depressed. I feel fine. I’ve felt fine for weeks. More than a month, even. It’s weird. It’s like suddenly hearing silence after living with a buzzing in your ears for as long as you can remember.
My first novel deals with the subject of mental illness. It’s also a fantasy story, but it is very much built on my experiences with depression and anxiety. It’s a scary subject, and an important one, and I hope that I can do it justice. I was at a really low point when I started writing this book a few years ago, and just as I finished my first real draft, it began to lift a little. It’s been a few months and I can honestly say I’m not depressed right now. I’m not going to go into any of the things that may have contributed to this. They’re kind of irrelevant to this post, and the truth is that I really don’t know what did it. It might be a random fluctuation of hormones, for all I know. It’ll probably come back. That’s just how it works.
Ongoing or intermittent, depression is a fact of life for many people. I don’t think I’m alone in the experience of wishing for something to fight to make it better. We often reach for something solid to grapple with when our minds turn on us. You can’t exactly fight the thoughts in your head, and trying to do so can even make things worse. In fantasy, there’s more freedom from these realistic constraints, and it is usually possible to fight the things that plague and haunt us.
So, that’s it. This is who I am, what I’m going through right now, and the thing I am making. In a minute I’m going to go back to editing until my eyes bleed and I hate what I’ve made a little bit.
*Waves*
Jasmine Collins 