The Creativity Murderer

Hello, darklings.

Let’s talk about writing when you have mental health issues, particularly depression.

I’m diagnosed with major depressive disorder. I take meds for it. I have to write around it. I’m not alone in this. 

Depression is sinister disease to live with. When it hits, you go through what motions you can muster the energy for, but everything is bland and meaningless. Sometimes, everything seems painful and disastrous with no escape. Sometimes the demons in your head drown out all else. And sometimes the disease is fatal. 

There are times you may survive, but your creativity won’t. 

As a writer, you pull from a deep pool of muses and emotion to bring written words to life. You connect with readers, writers, and deep within yourself. When depression hits, that process gets hard. Fatalism settles in. You believe that your writing doesn’t matter. The depression will strangle creativity with black leather gloves and leave its body in a trash bin.

Depression also makes thinking difficult. 

That’s a proven fact. Depression slows your thoughts down, affects your memory, causes a cloud of woolly confusion. This makes doing just regular things like cleaning, cooking, and paying bills difficult. Of course it affects your writing as well! You’re not stupid. You're not tapped out of stories. You’re ill. 

I’ve gone through it enough that I know it doesn’t last. Winter is the worst time, when sunlight gets scarce and cold drives me indoors. But usually after a few weeks I can shake it off and get back to work. 

Two months passing with no lift to the gloom concerned me, enough to bring it up to my doctor. She explained I’ve been on my escitalopram oxalate (lexapro) at max dose for so many years, it’s stopped working effectively. So I was prescribed bupropion (wellbutrin) at the lowest dose, and given all the warnings about stopping if I have thoughts of self harm or suicide. 

I’m not worried about the disease being fatal, though. I’ve handled suicide ideation since I was in elementary school and I’ve defeated such notions years ago. So Death will not get me to do its work for them. (Kill me another way, ya bum.)

What I worry about is my creativity. Will this make it so I can’t focus? Will the side effect cause anxiety and paralyze me with imposter syndrome? Will I be able to sleep? Will I go numb? 

But it’s madness to just continue like things are fine. If you’re not able to write and that continues more than four weeks, things are not fine. 

Things are not fine. 

There’s no need to feel guilty for it. People don’t write well when they’re going through the flu. A depression bout is the same--a period of being sick. Treat it like the illness it is and do the things needed to recover. Exercise, eat healthy, hydrate, practice self positivity, take vitamins, and reach out to friends and family. And if that doesn’t work like it didn’t for me? Reach out to a professional. 

And always remember, it won’t go on forever. Not if you work at it.

You have to write, little corvids. You have to live to write. You have to treat yourself gentle to live. I promise, you got this. 

P.S. So far, the wellbutrin is working extremely well and side affects have been mild thus far.