An Antidote to Suffering
Something that came up briefly last week in therapy is that when I first started feeling like I was moving past some of the things that had made my 20s so miserable for me, I was reluctant to let them go because I didn't know who I was without them. I didn't know myself if being mentally ill wasn't a core component of my identity, and if trauma wasn't the defining factor in most of my experiences and reactions, and if the label of sad girl no longer quite applied the way it once had. If I didn't have these things, what did I have? If I lost the depth and personality I thought I was only afforded because of my suffering, what reason would anyone have to be interested in me?
I have always felt that there's something fundamental missing in me, something that would make me worthwhile or interesting or attractive to other people. Something that everyone else has. I lack whatever it is that makes other people dynamic, appealing, memorable, people worth getting to know and keeping around. I used to be convinced that no one ever thought of me if I wasn't directly in their line of sight or actively talking to them, or, if they did, it was negatively. I thought this because I knew that if I were someone else, I wouldn't be friends with me. I've written about all of this before, but I say it here, now, to say that I believed I needed mental illness and trauma and sadness to fill the void within myself left by the lack of whatever this fundamental thing is.
My therapist suggested that because I'm a creative person, some of this might be caused by the pervasive idea that suffering leads to good art. The trope of the tortured artist is ever-present, even today, when we ostensibly know better than to glamorize it. I've seen many people over the years say that they feel less of a need to write, in particular, when they're happy, when things are going well for them. They seem to feel that they have less to say during times of peace than during times of struggle. Or maybe it's not that they have less to say, but that they have less worth saying. As though happiness is shallow and unremarkable, as though misery and despair and tragedy are the only things that matter. As though I haven't fought tooth and nail for the happiness I feel. As though I didn't almost die for it. As though it's easy to be happy in a world that would rather I had.
This is not to say that suffering never leads to good art. Of course it can and does. But it's not the only thing that does, or, I would argue, even the most significant thing. And art born of suffering isn't inherently superior to art born of joy. It's not deeper or more deserving of consideration. It does a disservice to so many of us who have spent more than enough time suffering and are ready to move on from it to imply, even indirectly, that it is.
I used to believe that the only music I cared about was sad music. Quiet, introspective, morose music with guitars and serious men singing about serious things. This music was my whole personality for a period of time in my late teens and early 20s. I credit One Direction with saving me from that life and reminding me that there's value in simple, uncomplicated, joyful bops. From there, I was able to make my way back into the world of pop and the world of hip-hop, spaces I occupied before I decided that they were frivolous and not befitting the persona I was cultivating as a tragic figure destined only for depression and disappointment.
This is a little bit flippant, and it's not meant as a reflection on anyone else who deals with mental illness. I'm only speaking about myself here, and I assure you that I feel a great deal of fondness for my past self. She was doing the best she could with the resources she had, and she was trying so hard to find a space that felt like it might fit her. It just happens that she was also pretty embarrassing.
I came of age on the internet, and specifically on online journaling platforms. first it was Xanga and then it was LiveJournal, and I even briefly tried to use MySpace as a blog. These were places that brought out both the best and the worst in me. I was able to practice writing in a relatively judgment-free environment and I had an outlet when I desperately needed one, but I also gravitated toward girls who were equally sad and unwell and we encouraged each other to really wallow in those feelings. Suffering was glorified, and the more poetically you could write about it, the bigger the following you were able to amass. I'm still in touch with a few of these girls, now women, to this day, and maybe they would disagree with my depiction of that time. That's fine. But it's how it felt to me and it's how I interacted with it.
All these things being the case, I was primed to believe that sadness was who I was. My pain was the best thing I had to offer to the world. Without it, I had nothing. Without it, I was nothing. But that's not true. It never was. Suffering is not a requirement to make good art, and it's not a requirement to make me a person who matters. I don't have to hurt and retraumatize myself again and again to be visible. I don't have to hate myself to make other people love me. And neither do you. Everything in pop culture tells us that artists are tormented by their own minds, by their creativity and their genius, by their vices, but it doesn't have to be that way. There is so much good, beautiful, impactful art that celebrates happiness and love, that comforts and soothes, and it's no less than art that challenges and harrows and devastates. There's a place for both. Balance matters.
Since writing is my medium of choice, it's what I'm most familiar with, so let me give some examples. The Orange by Wendy Cope is a poem that is so simple and short and yet, those ending lines hit me in a real way every time. Everything Is Going to Be All Right by Derek Mahon is an example of a poem that hints at some of the darker things, but they're just that, hints, and the feeling it always leaves me with is one of contentment. Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, of course, is a classic of the genre and one of my favorite poems of all time. Cozy fantasy, solarpunk, and hopepunk are genres of speculative fiction that encompass this concept of lighter, more uplifting art to varying degrees. There is so much beyond this. People have been writing, painting, drawing, playing, singing, filming, and living joyfully for as long as these mediums have existed, and we will continue to do so because it matters. Happiness matters. It's not the only thing that does and there must be space for the heavier things, but as someone who spent my formative years and many more besides believing that I was nothing if I didn't want to die, this is where I currently feel called. To defiantly ground myself in my thriving era.
Because this is the thing I now know. I am so much more than my worst impulses and my darkest thoughts. People love me and want to be around me because they like who I am, not because of how prettily I fall apart. I have more to give than my tears and more to say than rip-offs of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Virginia Woolf, The Virgin Suicides, Girl, Interrupted, and every other suicide text I can get my hopeless little hands on. Being happy is not the death of creativity, but the thing that makes it possible for me. I can't write anything if I'm dead, and I didn't want to live when I was suffering so much, and if you're in that place still, my hope is that this might help you to see a path out of those dark woods. At the very least, I hope it might help you to want to find that path. There's so much waiting for you at the end of it.