No answers
I began this post as a comment in response to Heather. It quickly grew too long for a simple comment.
Heather writes that she has no answers for me. Well, I have no answers either, and I still write here, probably much to the chagrin of a lot of people. As for whether I am depressed, I’m not supposed to be depressed; I’m on medication. And I don’t feel depressed, not the way I used to anyway. I daresay my family would say I do not look depressed; I do not act depressed.
I just don’t have much feeling about anything, my grandmother’s health aside. I can intellectually consider the ramifications of the fact that my son never sees me read a book for my own pleasure, but as far as feeling outrage, or a sense that I need to change my own attitude and begin reading again…no, I have no desire to do that.
I do not have the desire to do much of anything. No ambition. No motivation. I just don’t see the point anymore. Life flows on regardless of my action or inaction. Last Friday, Lynn and I were sitting in the coffee shop and a man nearby began chatting with us. It turned out he was an editor with a University Press, and much to my chagrin Lynn started asking him for advice about publishing. She told him about things I have written and asked how I might go about getting published, and I just sat there, a cold, embarrassed lump wishing the man would go away or receive a phone call or something. He kept looking at me, expecting me to say something, and I looked back at him, passively and without expression. Finally, to my relief, he did receive a phone call. I told Lynn afterwards she needs to give up the idea of my writing. I am not writing anymore. I am never going to write again. I will never publish anything.
My therapist read some of my writing and basically confirmed what I knew already: I can write well, but not well enough. There is no point in pursuing it any longer as a viable option for a career, or even as a hobby. I once spoke to my therapist about how I have always wanted to write about my childhood, and his response was, “What makes you think your childhood is worth writing about?” Then, apparently sensing the harshness of that reply, he said, “Or rather, why would someone want to read about your childhood?”
That comment was like a cold slap of water. Why hadn’t I seen it before? Of course it wasn’t worth writing about. That explained a lot, actually. It explained why I found it so difficult to complete anything I began writing remotely resembling a novel-length autobiographical piece of fiction.
My life is not worth writing about! My experiences are not worth writing about. And if my own life is unworthy of fictionalization, then what else is there for me? I am not smart enoough to write non-fiction or criticism. I am not imaginative enough to write non-autobiographical fiction. And what’s more, the desire to write seemed to pass away with my therapist’s words as if it had been a mere phantom of the mind.
I felt as if he had awakened me from a dream. Now I stand in the cold daylight of a cold morning, awake and trying to get my bearings.
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As for the first thing, as we all know I’m only a licensed driver, so I can’t diagnose you with anything. Apathy is but one sign of depression, so perhaps I’m way off the mark, as you suggest. Also, I don’t know you and see you like your family, indeed am thousands of miles away, so what’s about to happen is I’m about to talk out of my ass. What I do know is that though you may feel better, look better, act better, and the chemicals in your brain are more in balance, restoring more of the balance in your life, I doubt a drug alone will simply completely the depression. There’s got to be a reason why you’re taking the drug in conjunction with therapy, and why treatment is often prescribed that way — both drugs and therapy.
As for your writing and childhood… The question itself was *almost* neutral (depending on how he said it, I suppose. How did he say it?), or probably meant as a neutral, an open question to try to solicit something other than a “yes” or a “no.” You’ve taken it as a negative. I wasn’t there, so again, it’s my ass talking. Just saying a second interpretation is possible is all.
I don’t know. All I do know, from reading you for a while now, is you seem to hold a profound sense of worthlessness, and tend to seek out confirmation of your worthlessness even where it’s not meant.
Comment by Heather — Thursday, 26 July 2007 @ 11:41 am
I don’t think he meant the question negatively; he seemed concerned to rephrase it so that it did not hurt my feelings. Nothing much hurts my feelings. I think what he wanted, as you say, was for me to consider the validity of my childhood goal. Was it ever reasonable to think I could achieve it, and that anyone would care? Or was I setting myself up for a fall? Obviously, I’ve come to think I was setting myself up to be disappointed, like the kid who thinks he can be a star athlete when he grows up when really his talent is minimal.
Comment by greypilgrim — Thursday, 26 July 2007 @ 11:47 am
Maybe it’s not whether anyone would read it, but whether the process of writing would make you happy. And because you feel determined to fail, you take no pleasure from writing any more. All because there was this drive to be the best, and you find out that perhaps you are not, like your athlete.
So what? So what if you’re not the best? There’s a lot of shit out there.
I think what you maybe needed was a break from writing. I don’t think you should give it up. You’re getting help. You’ve got other things to occupy your life right now. But if you’ve always identified as a writer, and you’ve taken that away from yourself, what does that make you?
You’ve got a hole in your life that will just get bigger if you consider yourself apathetic or a failure.
Comment by Mel B. — Thursday, 26 July 2007 @ 12:48 pm
*ah* I think I see.
I agree with Mel B., and would just like to add that maybe now you’re mourning what was, with no idea of where to go find what will be, or even if there is a point in finding out what will be.
You’ve taken away your life purpose. It’s hard for anything to have a point when there is no purpose.
Comment by Heather — Thursday, 26 July 2007 @ 3:25 pm
Listen, are you seriously going to give up on any future possibility of writing or publishing because some therapist thinks your writing isn’t good enough? I don’t know whether you’re a good enough writer–or lucky enough, or going to write something that will market well, or whatever–to say that you should do it. What the hell do I know about whether it’s worth it to you? But I damn well know that “my therapist didn’t like my short story” is not at all a good reason to think it’s worthless. He’s not even your creative writing instructor of your friend, the editor. He’s a fucking therapist.
And I gotta say, if what you were showing him and talking to him about was a narrative about your childhood and how that’s affected you to today, then a therapist just might be the absolute worts judge of the value of such a story–he hears enough of those stories every single day and has to approach them in a professional, clinical manner, so of course such a narrative would be a tough sell for him.
I have to say that Mel B. is talking much sense up above. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that you are never going to the greatest writer in Western culture. But there are a helluva lot of halfway decent writers who publish halfway decent books that people read and find some value in, and that doesn’t make all those halfway decent writers losers.
I think your tendency to catastrophize about your writing is a not uncommon dysfunctional defensive response. (Well, it might be uncommon to catastrophize about writing specifically, but the tendency to catastrophize is not an uncommon dysfunction.) I think it’s one very common symptom of depression. Again, I’m not saying you have to write or that you will certainly someday write again. I don’t know whether you will.
Neither do you.
Your desire to say with such certainty that you never will is a misplaced defensive mechanism of some sort. I don’t see how it helps you in any way, though, to decide that the fact that you haven’t taken any pleasure from writing recently means that you will never write again.
Stop exerting so much effort in worrying about what will happen in the future, with your writing and everything else, and focus on what you are doing right now. You live in the present. Stop avoiding with the painful issues that you are facing right now by spinning off into elaborate fictions about your future prospects as a writer.
Comment by Scrivener — Thursday, 26 July 2007 @ 11:51 pm
Everything you all have written here is very sane and very insightful. Even though I know these things to be true, it is still much harder to actually live by these ideas than not. I have a lifetime of bad habits and negative thinking to overcome. And maybe deep inside I don’t want to overcome them. It’s always much easier not to change.
On the subject of the therapist evaluating my writing, it’s not a matter of taking his opinion too seriously, but of trusting my own evaluation. He simply validated what I already felt or knew to be true. And he wasn’t really evaluating my writing anyway, but prompting me to evaluate it.
Anyway, I agree with everything written here. I don’t know what more to say.
Comment by greypilgrim — Sunday, 29 July 2007 @ 10:30 am