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dustherondale's review
4.0
I found about this from one of those tiktok videos with little poems and quotes and tumblr posts, it contained a quote from this essay:
«The San Francisco therapist kept telling me I shouldn’t be terrified of creative experimentation.
“I don’t know what’s going to come out of me,” I told her. “It has to be perfect. It has to be irreproachable in every way.”
“Why?” she said.
“To make up for it,” I said. “To make up for the fact that it’s me.” »
I have to say, this essay (or story) hit a little too close home, because i have a friend who is currently battling with a rather severe case of depression, and when someone you love is in pain, you get the gist of it, you get they are sad and suffering and you may even know why, but you dont live it, you are not inside their minds with them, and to read something that transports you so clearly into the mind of the person with depression, that puts you right at the center of it is.....heartbreaking? enlighing? I dont even know, what i do know is that im going to give my friend a call in the morning because i miss her and its been a couple of weeks since i last saw her.
I think it speaks volumes that, even if i've struggled with anxiety and depression and ocd in the past, thats not what i highlight the most out of this essay, because although i do relate with it, what means the most to me is that it makes me feel relieved to have some sort of written testimony that can help me understand my friend's pain better. It not the same situation and im aware of it, but every single thing that can help me be a better friend helps.
You can read this for free and i encourage everyone who has ever dealed with depression, anxiety or is a creative person in general to read it. Also people who have never gone through it but wish to understand, please try to understand, its all we are asking for.
Its also beautifully written, here are some fragments i liked:
«Sometimes it’s incremental, a slippage by degrees. You freeze, you hide; you abandon all responsibility in an escalating series of omissions. You don’t answer the people who come looking for you. You stop being able to support yourself because supporting yourself means having the capacity to interact normally, to answer for the consequences of your actions or inaction. You no longer feel capable of going through the motions necessary to navigate the world on legitimate terms. You become convinced that you’re exempt from these terms, that they were not written with you in mind. And you’re so ashamed of your failure, so afraid of burdening people, so terrified of being beholden to or controlled by whatever might save and contain you, that you just recede, and disappear.»
«But it wasn’t just that. There was something else. It was something I recognized from before all this happened: a kind of resettled baseline, a way of seeing. It’s not the old staunch happiness of my early years, or the jaundiced grimness that set in later. It’s neither sad nor happy. It’s just something that lets me see the world clearly enough to write about what it’s like not to see the world clearly. »
«The San Francisco therapist kept telling me I shouldn’t be terrified of creative experimentation.
“I don’t know what’s going to come out of me,” I told her. “It has to be perfect. It has to be irreproachable in every way.”
“Why?” she said.
“To make up for it,” I said. “To make up for the fact that it’s me.” »
I have to say, this essay (or story) hit a little too close home, because i have a friend who is currently battling with a rather severe case of depression, and when someone you love is in pain, you get the gist of it, you get they are sad and suffering and you may even know why, but you dont live it, you are not inside their minds with them, and to read something that transports you so clearly into the mind of the person with depression, that puts you right at the center of it is.....heartbreaking? enlighing? I dont even know, what i do know is that im going to give my friend a call in the morning because i miss her and its been a couple of weeks since i last saw her.
I think it speaks volumes that, even if i've struggled with anxiety and depression and ocd in the past, thats not what i highlight the most out of this essay, because although i do relate with it, what means the most to me is that it makes me feel relieved to have some sort of written testimony that can help me understand my friend's pain better. It not the same situation and im aware of it, but every single thing that can help me be a better friend helps.
You can read this for free and i encourage everyone who has ever dealed with depression, anxiety or is a creative person in general to read it. Also people who have never gone through it but wish to understand, please try to understand, its all we are asking for.
Its also beautifully written, here are some fragments i liked:
«Sometimes it’s incremental, a slippage by degrees. You freeze, you hide; you abandon all responsibility in an escalating series of omissions. You don’t answer the people who come looking for you. You stop being able to support yourself because supporting yourself means having the capacity to interact normally, to answer for the consequences of your actions or inaction. You no longer feel capable of going through the motions necessary to navigate the world on legitimate terms. You become convinced that you’re exempt from these terms, that they were not written with you in mind. And you’re so ashamed of your failure, so afraid of burdening people, so terrified of being beholden to or controlled by whatever might save and contain you, that you just recede, and disappear.»
«But it wasn’t just that. There was something else. It was something I recognized from before all this happened: a kind of resettled baseline, a way of seeing. It’s not the old staunch happiness of my early years, or the jaundiced grimness that set in later. It’s neither sad nor happy. It’s just something that lets me see the world clearly enough to write about what it’s like not to see the world clearly. »
ksusanna's review
Stunning… ran to put her short story collection on my tbr just to see I already did almost a year ago.. I know my tastes so well
alexia445's review
dark
emotional
reflective
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Self harm, Mental illness, and Suicide