Misery Loves Monotony

I don't know if anyone else feels the same way, but personally I find depression boring as shit.

Right, now that I've probably got people all riled up and telling me to be more sensitive about mental health issues instead of being a judgemental twat, let me explain. I don't find depression as a mental health issue boring, because I don't find mental health issues boring. This is mainly because I'm sick and tired of having them swept under the proverbial carpet, but let me move swiftly on...I don't find people talking about depression boring as shit either. Again, I don't like having those issues swept under the carpet - and I've found it useful to be able to share experiences with others and not feel guilty or ashamed.

No, what I find boring about depression is the utter monotony of it all. You wouldn't think it, but being miserable is actually very repetitive...Wanting to die gets old. Being vulnerable and shaking and crying gets old. Hurting and frustrating the people around you gets old. Feeling empty and in pain gets old. Slowly losing the ability to take care of yourself gets old. Getting triggered to holy fuckery to the point where even talking about self-defence or reading the news makes terrible thoughts surface...That gets old. Being sick and tired and miserable, day after day, with little or no respite...You get to know it so thoroughly it repels you. Don't get me wrong, it still fucking hurts, but it's in no way novel. It's just the same slog, day after day, the slog that brings you to your knees and breaks you down to the point where you want to die.

Maybe that suffering touches you, in which case I might just be getting something across properly (and if I am, I wholeheartedly apologise for having discussed something so painful). If you have to live through that, it still keeps touching you every minute of every day - actually, being touched is the wrong phrase. It's more like having a giant, painful wound that refuses to heal. Got that?

Now imagine this same wound also being incredibly boring, because your experiences with it repeat themselves over and over again. It's much more difficult to get across to people who haven't lived through something like this - it's not something you really think of as happening - but it's true. For me at least, depression really is that monotonous.

So I suppose that's the first strike against the people who think that suffering is some kind of enlightening, ennobling, purifying experience; there's nothing enlightened, noble or pure about raw, gaping pain. Just get that into your skull right now. It doesn't make people better. It is each person's unique, special hell, a hell they go through for no high and lofty reason - just circumstance, ignorance and cruelty.

I should really go on to the second strike now, and it's this: people seem to think that misery and creativity are somehow linked. I have read many explanations as to why this should be, which are usually along the lines of overthinking making you miserable.

I can see why people might think that they're linked; there is a maddening correlation that is just shy of the threshold for statistical significance. Perhaps they are. But I find mental illness more of a hindrance than a help when it comes to being creative; sure, it helps me understand things in a different way, and sure, all of my experiences during the bad times are fuel for creativity in the good times.

But in the bad times themselves, I'm not creative. I'm stuck in unbearable pain and I feel like the air is being crushed out of my lungs. I just want to curl up and die; doing something creative is pretty much the last thing on my mind. And I don't think that there'll ever be a good time again, only that things will get worse and worse. This is what depression does to you: it makes you think that there is no hope left, and that even if there were you'd be too weak to grasp at it. I have to have my friend tell me to do some art for me to be creative, because it's just about the last thing I'd do.

So sure, they may be linked, maybe - but while people are suffering, they're probably not going to be creative. Not in the worst depths of their suffering, anyway; they need to be given support to get better, and that won't take away the creativity, it'll make it come back and flourished.

Otherwise, they're stuck in a hell that's not just painful, but boringly so.

Comments