I’m having a bad mental health day.
Well, I’ve been having a string of bad mental health days.
Ten weeks or so, it seems, and every day is a battle just to get up and face it.
I’m paralyzed by a fear of failure, and that fear is stopping me from creating anything that matters.
Hell, it’s preventing me from creating anything at all.
So I gave myself an exercise today, to see if I can help move this ship that’s been trapped in ice.
I had a simple idea, and I gave myself permission to just spit it out without thinking too much. I decided to write in a style that I don’t normally use, just to crack the ice a little bit.
And because I’m so afraid of failure, I gave myself permission to share this unvarnished, unpolished, trapped-in-ice bunch of words that spilled out of my head.
The monster lives under the bed. It sleeps among the dust bunnies, wraps itself around the box of sweaters, stretches its legs between toys.
It keeps the lost socks. Lost things are desired to be found and that need sustains the monster when the children are not in their beds.
The children know the monster is there, as all children do, having felt its presence in the dark of night. Their parents don’t believe in monsters, as no parents do, having forgotten the truths they knew when they were children.
What the children and the parents don’t know is that the monster under the bed does not threaten on the children.
It protects them. From the other monsters.
The monster in the closet.
The monster who taps at the window when the wind blows.
The monster who lurks in the hallway, just outside the bedroom door.
The monster who stands in the room when the children hide beneath the covers.
The monster who lives under the bed waits for them to come calling. The monster who lives under the bed waits for them to tap on the window or scratch on the walls or creak the closet door open. The monster who lives under the bed waits and when the children are in danger, it reaches out with an impossibly long arm, covered with fur and scales and blisters and oozing pustules. It reaches out and opens a claw, snaps it closed on the neck of the monster who lives in the closet, crushes the life out of the monster who taps on the window, flays the skin off the monster who lurks in the hallway. When the children hide beneath the covers, it breaks the neck of the monster who stands in the dark bedroom.
It protects the children, as it protected their parents, as it will protect the children’s children long after they have grown into parents and forgotten it or any of the other monsters existed.
It protects them
and it waits.
It waits for all the other monsters to be driven out, so that it may uncoil itself, stretch itself out, creep into the bedroom
and feed.
Fifteen or so minutes, 352 words, a few images, an unexpected ending. Something where there wasn’t something before. Something unpolished and raw and imperfect. Something published for the sake a making a thing that isn’t perfect. Okay.
Maybe this will crack the ice, or at least sweep away a few snowdrifts.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Hope you are well.
Hey Will. i am so sorry you are also trough a heavy depression. you might never read this, but, if you happen to, i’m here to talk. i’m also going trough one of the saddest things one can go trough probably at my age, and i don’t know what to do.
https://medium.com/@cugotaeric/day-113-27-nov-2018-214419e9ff75
I just came here because my kids – both boys, ages 14 and 11 – and my husband and I have basically spent two straight days of our holiday vacation binge-watching TableTop and talking every so often about how much we all admire you: your humor, your myriad creative talents, the value you place upon friendship, your candor about mental illness, the way you stick up for people at personal risk, and any number of other things. I posted as much to Facebook and my friend Jenny said she went to high school with you and sat next to you in 9th grade English and I about fainted. 🙂
Anyway, I was thinking about how fortunate I feel that my boys look up to you so much, as you’re exactly the sort of person I would choose if I got to choose who my boys would look up to. That’s a tremendous gift. So I thought, “Hm, I should really figure out a way to make that sentiment available for him to see, if he wants. Not that he has to care, but maybe he’d care.” So I set off to find where you’re interacting with the public these days.
Then I saw that you’d left Twitter and Mastodon in August (which, hoo boy, I understand — I would never, ever want to be a public figure in an age of Twitter!) And that led me here. I didn’t initially know that you’d been having a bad mental health month (hey-o, fellow depression/anxiety sufferer here!) but now that I know that, I definitely want to leave this note. I realize you may never see it, but if you do, please know that the things you do, the person you are, have mattered to us. None of us really go in for celebrity fandom (er, anymore… I was a literal card-carrying member of the Michael Crawford International Fan Association when I was thirteen, but thankfully I’m more sensible now) but we know a deeply decent person when we see him. So, thanks. Anymore, decency seems in shorter and shorter supply. Thank you for embodying it even so.
Wil, I know you’re probably not going to see this, but I finally hit the tipping point of needing to say a very specific Thank You and I couldn’t think of a better format than a comment on a recent post; sorry. (This post is (also) great, btw. But I have so much more to say that I’m going to skip the particulars of this specific one. Sorry for technically being off-topic!)
I’m a 40-year-old white woman from Detroit, raised by parents who clawed their way to middle class, mother of a marvelous 15-year-old girl who I love completely inside a family trickily defined by “life details” like divorce and adoption; and a hobbyist writer. Those last two are relevant because they let me see for absolute certain, in your writing, the love you have for your kids and family — I admire tf out of you for that, partly because I do it too and I know how much work it takes, especially when the legal and other arrangements around your kids are “non-traditional” — whatever that means, ::eyeroll::.
But this is about mental health. I started dealing with chronic depression when I was about eight, and maybe anxiety too — your descriptions of nightmares and sleep-related terror as a child hit me right in the guts; that was 100% me — but as you can probably guess, I got only the downsides of psychological care for a long, long time, so who can be sure what it was. I quite probably have Asperger’s, based on more recent work. In an attempt to raise me further out of poverty (and, I strongly suspect, protect me from the “black” influence of Detroit), my parents sent me to private Catholic school, where I was bullied equally badly by the kids and the rabily-reactionary clergy. (Hardcore Catholics have such a wonderful approach to smart and strange young women. I was probably lucky to avoid the stake.) I refused to continue there in 7th grade and moved to public, shit-town-southeast-Michigan schools. Those are also a lovely place to be mentally ill — we had a police department in our high school, and ho boy did I know them intimately.
I was 35 and going through my second divorce before I found a real therapist, the kind you hire as a professional and work with on learning and repairing your brain (brain/body is more accurate, as you know, but whatevs) — but it’s taken until now, half a decade, for me to finally stop frantically hiding my illness(es)…and even giving it/them a little space to, you know, exist. To need things, like money, or time, or spoons. To be real. And holy SH!T are you a significant part of that progress. Again, I know this is a big soppy useless comment, but I just couldn’t handle the cognitive dissonance of not having given your help its due for this long.
Science fiction saved my life at least once, probably. But it wasn’t your work that’s been especially important to me: It’s your self, your personal writings and your clear-headed willingness to stand there and face what you are and accept it as best you can, and to work through it with all of us watching. …Thanks to being tortured with the exquisite implements of religion, I live with a LOT of social anxiety, and the idea of talking with the public about my socks, nevermind my often-all-consuming Depression, is staggering to me. To see you doing it for these last several years has meant everything to my ability to begin to do it, with my friends and family, and even, almost/sorta, my job. (I’m extremely lucky to have a great tech job now, and they would be fine with my needing accommodations for my illnesses; but I have yet to really explicitly ask for it.) Ten years ago I had a Bourne-Identity’s-worth of cover stories and “systems” to keep afloat in spite of who I am. But thanks to your example, I feel I’m getting a little more honest each day, and working my way towards standing up for others too, the way you did in your excellent NAMI speech.
Before I go, I just want to add one more coda: That ability to speak up and give reality to one’s mental struggles is super important to me for another reason. I have one sibling, a brother, who’s been a mostly-shut-in victim of schizoaffective disorder for the majority of his adult life. (It’s like schizophrenia but super-hallucinatey.) He doesn’t have the option of faking it to get by, or hiding in workaholism, like I do. Thank all the gods for my parents coming around to the mental-illness reality when his condition got serious; they take great care of him — but that’s my job, too, and getting moreso. And it feels like the whole world is in my way, and that most people don’t even have the faintest clue what it’s like, or care to learn. I’ve had — and will continue to need — to develop guts of iron to stand up for him, and your helping me acknowledge and stand up for myself was a necessary ingredient. Thank you SO MUCH for your courage and your honesty.
Not so sure about this, but I like the concept. I’m sure that there is an algorithm that could bring it to realization.
50,000 Monkeys at 50,000 Typewriters Can’t Be Wrong
By the way, enjoyed your characters.
Wil, because of your compassion, and willingness to let complete strangers get just a little closer to you, I was finally able to ask for help in identifying and finally treating my depression. Thanks to you and your willingness to share what you feel, and how you deal with it, sometimes successfully, other times – not so much, I have begun to build my own “tool kit” for dealing with the darker days. Thank you so much for all that you do, and I sincerely hope that you hear more from those who love and appreciate you, and less from those who have forgotten, or never knew the compassion and empathy everyone needs to be successful.
Thanks. I needed this today
I have partial bipolar. I wanted to be a writer, and I do 3d work. I don’t have writer’s block, but realized my intense creative periods are sporadic and its only painfull and sub par to force myself to create in a depressive state.
I try to anticipate and sense when I’m in a more euphoric mood and work as hard as I can when those high ability periods come.
Good exercise. Arriving here is never disappointing. I hope your depression lifts
Speaking of monsters…Depression heavy, I’ve been sleeping more, especially late afternoon. One day I woke myself snoring the most loud awful snore, my face felt like a monster. It unnerved me so bad, I felt scared about going back to sleep. Then I laughed, later when the horror wore off. That’s what I get from watching, “Midnight, Texas.” I was trying an exercise to ease the depression by viewing shows I don’t usually watch. Now…coffee helps the sleeping. Reading blogs like yours helps me feel better.
I still take care, though, to not fall asleep like that again.
I can relate to your situation, but hey! Hang in there buddy, this too shall pass.
Hi Wil!
I don’t know if, like me, your sense of well-being is at least partially influenced by the day-to-day circus in Washington, but the future has never looked darker for our embarrassment of a president, and it’s all his own doing; the people he’s hurting are standing up and demanding to be heard, Republican loyalty in the Senate is wavering, his house of cards still stands, but is shifting, shifting! If I were religious, I’d be praying. As it is, I called my House representative to thank him for passing bills to end the shutdown, and to ask him to continue to pass bills to end the shutdown. I called my Republican Senator to tell him that I vote, and that I expect him to vote, as it is his job, and that if our Senate Majority Leader won’t let my Republican Senator do his job, to replace him with someone who will, or else be prepared when I do likewise to him.
I look forward to celebrating with you, in spirit, the downfall of any and all traitorous would-be dictators.
All my sincere support to you and yours,
John
Thinking of you today, Wil. I’m having a hard time, too. Your willingness to be open and your public bravery help. Thanks for writing, and hang in there.
Hey Wil! (and anyone else in that boat. We hear you. You aren’t alone)
This is the text of something that got passed around Facebook recently:
“Creatives that haven’t created anything new for a while because you’ve been focusing on your mental health: I still see you, I’m so proud of you, and I can’t wait to see your next project (whenever you’re good & ready to take it on!) Your pace is the perfect pace for you, no Rush!!”
We’ll all be here whenever you’re ready for the thing. And we don’t mind waiting. For real. Like really. No joke.
Keep speaking. I will keep listening. Keep writing. I will keep reading. Your words have weight and inspiration and meaning and worth.
I would read a whole book of this as is.
Will, I appreciate your honesty and transparency. I have been living with depression about 10-12 years. It all came out after my daughter was born. I have a history of mental illness. My mother is bipolar. Her whole side had an array of mental illnesses. On my father’s side, they hide their mental illness well. It is a little less obvious. Most of his siblings have major anxiety and fears. From the time I was 12, I witnessed my mother suffer throught 2 nervous breakdowns, alcoholism, divorcing my dad, and now living alone after her 2nd husband dies a little over 2 years ago. It has been difficult to not only witness my mom’s irrational actions, but also managing my own depression while raising two kids. My husband is a good person and works hard. He commutes to NYC from CT everyday and after 20+ years of that, he also had to overcome things as well.
Why do I share this with you? I guess it is because you allow yourself to be who you are without apologies or excuses. No one can truly know what a person living with depression, anxiety or other illnesses feel. How each of us cope cannot be judged. Our actions may be bizarre to the “outsiders”, but unless they live in our head, no one knows the struggle and pain and frustration we deal with on a daily basis.
So, thank you. Thank you for putting yourself out there. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Thank you for walking the talk. Thank you for being a positive part of the community.
You may have been the person for that someone today…helping them see that shed of light…that sign of hope.
Keep taking care of yourself. It seems that sentiment gets thrown out there almost mechanically , but in this case…you are your own protector and nurturer. Don’t allow those monsters to keep you from doing what you need to do in order to get through the day. Those little things you observe are important.
One last thought…there is an area where I live on my way home that has the most magnificent view of the sky…I can’t just stop bc it it on a main road. So, if I can, I slow down, and take in that view and say out loud, “look at the sky!” My teenage kids make fun of me sometimes , but i tell them we have to appreciate the little things that bring joy…to me it is the sky and the beauty of its many colors and shades. Plus, I tell them someday when I am gone and they look up at the sky, they will think of me and smile. That is my hope, anyway!
I hope today is better than yesterday for you.
I read the monster story aloud to my beloved just now, relishing every word, savoring the twisted ending. Such a vivid tale of the uninvited intruder who waits so patiently for his moment. Glad you put pen to paper, or cursor to screen and shared with us.