Depression and Writing

A story of fiction versus nonfiction

Throughout my life, I’ve carried an armload of depression. I attended baby ballet classes at six. Every step stung. I pushed through years of dance class convinced that even the lightest round of rehearsal induced horrible pain.

Elementary school left me weary despite the easy work. I drifted off in class into dark thoughts until teachers shook me out of my reverie. I managed to get A’s in my classes, but the easy assignments never cheered me up.

Instead, those high grades made me worry I wasn’t learning, school was simply too easy, and the pain grew deeper.

Through all the hurt, I turned to books and stories. I read incessantly. My mother, a devout teacher, could leave me in a section of her school’s library confident I’d find a new novel to read, slouch into a corner, and she could return hours later to find me in the same position and deep into the story.

Books gave me a place where nothing hurt and no one expected me to make small talk. I could be myself.

Stories were my world

It seemed natural to pursue fiction in my early writing career. Why would I write anything else?

Books stood beside me like old friends. They offered doors away from pain, frustration, and sadness. I wanted to install those entryways and exits for my fellow readers and help them slip in and out of reality.

I wrote stories of my own with enthusiasm, filling my first computer with long, rambling works that I could print out in massive scrolls. As I got older, I joined writing groups, took on poetry and more risque stories for live readings.

I loved it, but my affection didn’t balance out the pain.

My work in fiction brought back all the same aches as ballet and school days. I loved writing short stories, poetry, and novels, yet the more I delved into the work, the more it became a slog. My brain struggled to wake up in the mornings and fought through thick fogs to see the structure of the story, the arcs of the characters.

Depression sat next to me through all the edits and rewrites, chewing on my toes.

I didn’t become a successful novelist, but in my late twenties I found work in freelancing and blog writing. It wasn’t the dream I’d dreamt for years on end, but it kept my partner M. and I fed. And I had time to write fiction on the side, nevermind that it induced banging headaches.

When I turned 39, my dad unexpectedly passed away. His death released something horrible inside me that took over everything in the span of a moment.

In my dad’s absence, my depression broke free and grew into a fat, lethargic beast that gobbled me whole.

Working depressed

None of my freelance clients knew about my downward spiral. The assignments continued to come in, but I shoved them away at every opportunity.

Sometimes I’d manage to drag myself to the screen for an hour of work, but my writing no longer had conviction.

I lost clients within weeks. After sending in some Amazon book ads, I got an angry message from my editor.

“What’s wrong with you?” he wrote. “I mean, what is this?”

I looked at the text I’d sent earlier and felt my jaw drop. No pronouns or names matched, the punctuation was abysmal. My words looked like they had arranged themselves with the lights off and after a few drinks.

My editor fired me.

I tried to console myself by writing short stories in my journal, but the depression beast ate up the words.

Then, my pen refused to move.

A loss of talent

“I can’t write!”

I sobbed as my partner held me and shook her head in bewilderment. Neither of us knew what came next. I saw writing as my only true skill, and I felt it had rejected me and walked out the door.

After my endless crying jags and endless hours in bed, she reached her breaking point.

M. informed me that I either took care of myself or found a new place to live. I didn’t argue.

We created a mental health plan. She encouraged me to keep my work down to a minimum and use the extra time to take care of myself. Together, we got me a therapist and a psychologist who diagnosed me with depression and prescribed me medication.

Slowly, slowly, I crawled my way back to life.

Depression can be triggered by a major loss, and the death of my father proved to be the force necessary to let mine loose. So, I went to my sessions. I took my pills. I did gentle workouts and gave myself permission to go slow at the keyboard.

A strange shift

As I recovered, something happened. My writing voice changed.

My old approach used the people around me — a wealthy child, her absent-minded mom, the teacher they both blamed for the kid’s broken arm — and fought to develop the characters into fictionalized versions of themselves. I presented them to fellow writers who applauded my efforts and assured me the work read well. I didn’t tell them it meant nothing to me as a creator.

The new writer voice that emerged felt raw and fresh. It arrived without struggle and I didn’t question what it wanted to say. If the new writer in me wanted to confess something awful or explore a weird middle school memory, I didn’t stop it. No name changes, no slog towards fiction.

I wrote what really happened, then let myself soak in the joy of telling the truth. It sent a loop of tingles through my brain and down out my fingers as they tapped the keys. I feel it now.

After I discovered my nonfiction side, I considered leaving fiction and pivoting completely.

“What if I’m just not a fiction writer?” I asked myself. “What if that’s okay?”

A new classification for myself

Once I put myself in the non-fiction category, I felt pieces of my literary personality fall into place. It made perfect sense. I loved reading true stories and always had the urge to retell them to anyone who would listen.

“Have you read Born to Run?” I’d ask random my friends. “You have to. It’s all about running!”

Podcasts fed my appetite for true stories along with tales from others’ childhoods, true crime, strange histories about my own country too esoteric to be taught in schools. I loved it all.

Nonfiction was for me.

The big question

If I loved true stories so much, why didn’t I write them from the beginning?

Essentially, my depression wasn’t properly managed and that made it hard to look inward and see what brought me joy.

For me, depression wasn’t a state of mind; it manifested as unbearable pain. And when nothing in my life alleviated that pain, I trained myself to stop looking for answers. I let the beast consume me slowly, until I’d fed it so much it filled all of my own space and took over my life.

Seeing that huge monster in control was terrifying, but I got what I needed from all that fear. A stronger voice and a deeper urge to speak out.

Now I’m using my voice for my new niche, education.

Depression changed me, which I expected. But I never guessed it would give me a new genre to write, a new topic to explore. It’s thrilling and terrifying, but I’m already interviewing subjects for a book about dyslexia. I’m so excited to write it that all my other assignments now get completed in half the time so I can get back to my own book.

The depression beast didn’t die, it’s still a part of my life, but now I tell it when it can sit with me and when it needs to go outside. Now I command and it listens.