Depression and the writer

[pegkerr]

Reading this was gut-wrenching. He was vastly smarter than me, and more gifted. He was also much sicker. On the other hand, I wonder if I survived and he didn't just because I just gave up more easily.

It makes me feel like a coward, but why? I'm the one who's alive. Doesn't that count for something? To disapprove of that is sick in its own way.

I don't like myself very much after reading this.

God, I thought I was fucking over this.*


*Letting the wrriters block win in the end, I mean.

Shit, why am I crying?

Edited to add: I'm all right everybody, don't worry. It's just that it totally took me by surprise.

Comments

[aome.livejournal.com]

Actually, he is the one who gave up. You are still here, still fighting to be part of life. You are the one who is showing great courage. Just because you 'gave up' on writing does not mean you are a coward in any way; it means you found other ways to direct your energy at the moment. Like earning a black belt.

He taught at my alma mater, btw.

*With hugs and tissues*

[pinguthegreek.livejournal.com]

Are you sure that you aren't confusing your sadness over this writer's death with your own feelings about not publishing at the moment ?

Because you write here so much that you cannot possibly not be anything but a writer. You write so passionately and eloquently. Therefore, your mind hasn't given up. It's just that what you write and where you publish has changed.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

There's more to being a writer than writing.

In 1986 I was a winner in the City Pages fiction contest. For more than twenty years I didn't do much writing, until starting up again in 2006. I've now got two manuscripts in the works that I feel good about eventually being publishable. The things I did and learned, the relationships I experienced, the ways I grew during those twenty years all make me a better writer now. If you aren't writing now that doesn't mean you aren't the same person who will come back and write again when you're in that place in your soul that you need to be for the right words to come.

[cesario.livejournal.com]

I should think the most creative thing a writer could do is struggle to redefine him/herself. Not to mention the bravest.

[em-h.livejournal.com]

You have NOT IN ANY WAY given up.

The fact that he is *dead* is a pretty decisive victory for his writer's block, plus a defeat for all other aspects of his life. You are still here and *doing* on all sorts of levels.

[miraclebean.livejournal.com]

When my son at the tender age of 7 decided to embark on his first suicide attempt, after pulling him off that ear-screeching highway overpass, and we were calm and safe and warm in our home, I asked him, "Why?"

"I give up, Mommy." Even at 7, he was wiser than his years.

You didn't give up. You don't ever give up. That's very obvious in all that you do. And for that you are brilliant.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

There is no way that being the person alive means you're the one who gave up. Your being alive counts for everything! Plenty of people never write anything at all--you're already brave for doing any. Just because you're not publishing at the moment doesn't take that away.

[naomikritzer]

You are more than your writing.

If any of us had to choose between having a dozen more novels from you on our shelves, or having you in our lives, you win over your books, hands down.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Well, that's nice to know. Thanks.

[corinnethewise.livejournal.com]

Totally yes. I love your books so much, but they don't even compare to what it's been like to get to know you through your journal as a person.

[ckd]

I don't even know Peg in person, and I still agree with this. A dozen books set against the inspiration of good lunches, karate, walks across the bridge, and decreasing worldsuck? It's not even a close call as to which one means more to me.

[aerden.livejournal.com]

Amen.

[shandra.livejournal.com]

Hey Peg, I've been reading your LJ for a long time so I feel like I know you even though I don't. First, I think raising a family and managing a household is a huge job, plus you do a job that is supporting your family. I think you should cut yourself some slack about whether that blocks you or not or whether it's permanent or not or whether it's win or lose or whatever. It's clear to me with your lunches, your karate, the way you address things... you're an artist. Your media are just not writing right now. You've written beautiful fiction; you maintain a really neat LJ, and this current financial situation you're in /will end/; it will not always be like this and life will flower again.

All of which is really to say, hang in there. It's ok and it will be ok.

[merimask.livejournal.com]

That is so heartbreaking.

I think to distill the reasons for his death & your survival down to "he was a better writer...ergo brilliance = fatality...ergo I am not a good writer 'cause I'm still alive" is a little simplistic. It's like saying someone who smokes will surely die of cancer, when that is not neccessarily true (or like saying "I don't smoke so I will never die of cancer", which is also not true).

To equate his brilliance with his fatal depression is maybe relevant...but probably not. It'd scare the crap out of me, as a struggling artist, to think that unless I go mad & cut off an ear, I'll never achieve the success of someone like Van Gogh. In other words; I think that as creative people we are not the sum of our woes. It's not a prerequisite that you be fatally depressed in order to be brilliant...although I think it's possible that posthumous brilliance is more readily appreciated by the popular media when the artist/writer commits suicide. Which is a freaking shame.

I don't think creativity has to be a fatal disease. I really don't. For every brilliant tortured writer that died by their own hand, I can point to ten who survived. I think their ability to wrestle with their demons & still live a full life bespeaks the kind of quiet courage & heroism that rarely gets the attention that a handfull of pills or a rope around the neck is given, to be blunt. It's not cowardly to live & fight. Make the fighters your heroes.

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

Well said.

[avengangle.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Well done.

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

That is a really hard article to read: I can see why it's left you feeling stunned and deeply sad.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Quite apart from the writing aspect, one of the end results of deep depression seems to be a kind of selfishness - that's what it looks like from the outside, at least, though it's clear it seems exactly the opposite internally. While I know that people can't just 'pull themselves out of it' I also can't imagine you sinking down to the point that you *ever* thought it would be better for the girls or Rob to have to find your body, as Wallace's wife did, than to continue having you in their lives.

[awelkin.livejournal.com]

As I've been learning recently, your life isn't your works. Your life is your day to day existence, and just being appreciated because you are you. All the rest is extra.

Catherine

With a Wet Noodle

[aerden.livejournal.com]

Whap, whap, whap!

No, you are not a coward for daring to live. It is difficult to live.

Erm, sorry for the outburst. I lost a friend of mine to suicide last November, and I am still a knot of wanting to cry and wanting to shake him and demand, "How the Hell could you do that to the people you love?!" He had incredible family and friendship support, and he still killed himself--was very determined to die. His wife found out when the police came knocking at their door. It was awful. I feel horrible for Wallace's wife, having to find him like that. I'd go into screaming hysterics, if it were my husband.

It is the ultimate self-absorption, the ultimate blindness, I think. I wish there were something I could say to help you feel better, even if you are generally feeling okay. I have those little moments of crying, too, sometimes.

PS: You haven't let the writer's block win. You're still alive, aren't you? You can choose to write something, anything. I'm a firm believer that writer's block is caused by something we are not as writers and as people willing to face. That's usually what it is, with me, anyway. You haven't let it win; you're just circling your prey.

Chantal

and that's how it felt writing the thing...

[whiskeychick.livejournal.com]

I think as a writer, there's a bit of you that you give away each time you write --- especially if it's pulled from the depths of our head and soul. Not just storytelling, because the storytelling part is (can be) uplifting. But the sharing, the releasing of it into the world -- that's the hard part.

For some of us that release regenerates us; for others, it tears us down even further.

FWIW, I cried when I heard of his death; and I cried reading that as well.

Writers are feeling sorts of people after all.

/hugz