Tag: creativity

Today is Not a Bad Day

Amanda Malamut1 Comment

Since writing my last blog, I’ve been in a slump. My creativity, along with my mental and emotional health, has waned. There have been days where I felt my depression come on like a sudden wave while I’m sitting at my desk or fighting through traffic. My social media has become a constant bombardment of terrifying political appointments, people being awful, and terrible things happening in the world. Then there are the people sprinkled in that telling me that I should be caring more, how I need to avoid the sweet siren’s call for apathy and calm—that I need to keep fighting against normalization of the events of the past couple of months.

The call to stay strong and vocal is important. It’s extremely difficult for people to maintain their productivity and rage over an extended period of time, and morale boosts are necessary. A younger version of myself would heed these calls, wearing them as armor as I stormed the gates. Now, I’m just tired of emotionally draining myself over and over to fill the well back up. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still paying attention to the aftermath of the election. The genocide in Syria. These things still swirl around my mind like an unsolvable puzzle.

My depression and anxiety makes it hard enough for me not to fall into a deep sea of despair every time that I log onto my social media accounts. Even when I can donate, write, or make the calls, I feel like there is so much more I could be doing, and I’m being lazy by not spending every waking moment stressing or doing something. And when the depression kicks in, I feel even guiltier. People have so much more to lose than me; who am I to sit in my car and cry after work? How can I possibly write anything that hasn’t already been said? Or, has been said by more qualified and talented people? Does my writing actually make a difference or do anything?

With careful thought and sage advice from friends I’m reminded that there is beauty in the struggle. There are days where the weight of the world will be too much for me, and I’m extremely lucky to have a support network to help me stand up after a fall. Every day that I’m here is a victory. I might feel like I’m losing a battle, but the war still rages on, and I’m very much still in the fight. The world may seem like it’s crumbling around me, but today is not a bad day if I continue to write. To think. To breathe.

 

Depression Doesn’t Make You an Artist

Amanda Malamut1 Comment

I read an article a week or so ago about mental health, creativity, and treatment. I’m not going to mention where the article was posted or anything about the article specifically because it is without a doubt one of the worst, disgusting, and harmful pieces of writing I’ve ever seen on the internet. Now you might say Amanda, there is a lot of terrible things on the internet, why is this one more horrible than the rest of it?

The intention of this article is the reason I would put it up there with the worst of the worst. In it the writer claims that it was better for her friend to have committed suicide than be on medication, because she wasn’t able to be her true creative self. I’m going to write that again. Someone thought, wrote down, and posted on the internet that someone killing themselves was better than their friend living a ‘lesser’ medicated life.

I don’t know what’s scarier, the fact that she thought she was being insightful or innovating, or a person struggling might use this as justification to not try therapy or medication. I can only speak for myself and my mental health journey, but I can say with 100% certainty that my writing was absolutely awful before I started a therapy regime supplemented with medication. Insanely terrible. I could barely write in coherent sentences, and if I did manage to write something not awful I had no confidence to let anyone read it. I wasn’t living up to my true self. I wasn’t living up to my creative potential. Honestly, I wasn’t really living.

After I started managing my depression and anxiety I’ve had people tell me that I had changed and my different self was not as good as the ‘old me.’ Apparently I was a better friend and a better person when I constantly grappled with chronic loneliness, anxiety, and depression. My medication and therapy has helped me find who I really was, not a depressed version of myself. And for some reason people have a hard time when people they know with mental health issues struggle toward being their better selves. It probably does look like we’ve changed, but really it’s just a matter of rediscovering who we are without depression or anxiety completely controlling our lives.

Romanticizing mental health problems as a way to being a great artist is dangerous, unhealthy, and extremely untrue. I was an unproductive writer who occasionally wrote sad, terrible poems in a journal I was never going to share. Now I’m writing a book, writing on this blog, and writing for Geeks Out. I’m a much happier and content person, and my writing benefits from that. A person who is struggling to be happy or stay alive isn’t automatically better at their craft. And even if they were for some reason? A person’s life is far more important than their art. A person shouldn’t feel like they need to sacrifice themselves to create something for the world.

Our lives are more important than our art. Our better lives help us create better art. This is what we need to be telling our friends and family. Struggling doesn’t make you a better artist, writer, composer, or anything else.

Our friends’ lives have no less value when they are trying to get better.