Writing through the Darkness

I remember, at one point during a period of major depression a few years ago, wishing desperately that I could empty my head of the tangled, jumbled fragments of thoughts and memories that felt as if they were battering my skull from the inside.

But talking was next to impossible. Following a conversation sometimes felt like I listening to people speak in another language. Wrapping my tongue around words was slow and laborious. When I tried to articulate my thoughts or my feelings, words just seemed to dissolve in my mind. Actually, even when ordering take-out or talking about the weather, words escaped me.

I remember sitting there in that moment and thinking if I can’t let this mess out of my head, it will explode. I thought about writing, but finding a notebook and a pen, and then the act of putting pen to paper seem too arduous. So I pretended I was writing. I closed my eyes and pictured my hand scribbling marks on a page, as I “wrote”.

As far as writing went, it sucked. There were more phrases than sentences. Ideas trailed off as a new subject started in mid-stream. Similes and metaphors abounded, as clichéd as they come. Yet, it helped.  

I began to feel a bit of easing in my head, like there was a little more space in there for the thoughts, ideas and images that remained to assemble themselves into a somewhat more orderly formation. Something I could decipher and make sense of.

But the thought of writing still seemed like too much. I had some serious cognitive fog going on — something that many people with depression experience. But I also accepted that it wasn’t just the cognitive decline of depression holding me back from writing; it was my fear that I wouldn’t do writing justice.

So I did what I always did when I think I can’t do something well enough. First, I procrastinated. Then I looked to arm myself with information. Somewhere in my Googling, blog reading and book searches, I came across: “Writing through the Darkness — easing your depression with paper and pen” by Elizabeth Maynard Schaefer, Ph.D.

The book was easy to read, which was an important feature since I found reading challenging at that time — a frustrating thing for someone who’d always been an avid reader. The book was a mixture of personal insights, inspiration, and information about depression and writing. And it helped.

Each day I read a chapter and then tried to write. Sometimes it was only a few sentences. Sometimes I wrote down ideas of what I could write about later, when I felt more coherent and could express myself better (yep, perfectionism on my back again). But eventually, I developed a daily practice of journal writing. 

This was writing just for me. Sometimes it was the mundane: bits about my day and the weather. Sometimes it was about what I was feeling: frustrated by slow recovery, worried about the future, regretful about the past, resentful of my present. Picking up a pen to write still felt daunting but, when I finished, my shoulders felt lighter and the space in my head greater.

Today, I started to tackle some clutter that had been piling up in my home office, including a stack of books that I’d been meaning to sort through to determine which I could pass on to friends, which I’d donate and which I might keep to re-read. 

Near the bottom of the pile, I came across Writing through the Darkness. I started to put it in the donate pile: it was a really good book, insightful, a helpful resource, but I’d gotten what I needed from it. I thumbed through the book to see if I'd left any slips of paper in it (I sometimes down jot notes when what I’m reading prompts a thought or idea) and noticed how many of the pages had tiny turned down corners, underlined sentences and scribbles in the margins. I re-read some of those underlined passages about writing, about how it can bring about revelations and help to process what we’re thinking or feeling. I remembered making those notations and how putting them into practice has helped ever since. 

But then it hit me, in that moment, that I’d stopped writing. Sometime in the past month or so, I’d set down my journal and hadn’t picked it up since. Why? Because the past few months have been busy, at work and outside of it, so I didn’t make the time?

Or, maybe, somewhere in the back of my mind I’d seen the fingers of the black fog of depression creeping in and writing about it would make it real.

It’s come on slowly. I hadn’t noticed its approach. But the signs had been there — signs I could see now, in hindsight. That feeling of jumbled, incoherent thoughts expanding in my head was one of them. Thoughts and ruminations cluttering up my head, squished in so tightly with nowhere to go — that feeling had been plaguing me for weeks.

Maybe, subconsciously, I’d avoided writing these past weeks so I could deny that depression was back. By not writing, I didn’t have to confront it.

Thoughts swirled in my head, or tried to. "Swirled" conjures up images of movement. My head was full of thoughts tangled up like knotted ropes. There’s only one way I’ve found to start untangling those ropes. 

My journal wasn't at hand, but my computer was right in front of me. I sat down and started typing.

Photo by Cheryl Smith