Coming out of my wardrobe

This is a post that has been rattling around at the back of my mind for months, but it wasn't until I watched the video below that I was finally able to get together the guts necessary to write it. I would really, strongly recommend watching it if you can spare the time - it's a wonderful and sympathetic take on something that, as the speaker points out, affects almost everyone - even if in different ways.

So, I'm coming out of my 'closet'. It is not, as Ash Beckham puts it, a rainbow-coloured one, and as I think it has certain fairly British qualities, I'm going to call it a wardrobe. My wardrobe has the picture of a massive black dog painted on the front of it. I never know quite the right verb to use. I have? I experience? I suffer from? I live with? Whatever the verb, the noun is simple: depression.

I'm not going to write today at any length about how I experience - or deal with - depression, but rather want to discuss why not talking about it became a 'wardrobe' in the first place.

To some extent, I guess it's cultural, in two directions. Internally, I suspect I have a certain amount of the British stiff-upper-lip - or at least the British mental cringe at the thought of doing anything so forward as to declare my emotions publicly, or to bother anyone else with the fact that I'm experiencing difficulties with them. Externally, there's a perception I have that people in general might not be sympathetic to 'confessions' of depression; that there might still be people out there who think I'm just being pathetic, need to get over myself, or am even just making it up to get attention. 

Of course, this perception of an external negative attitude towards depression may also be a symptom of depression. Something that I have increasingly come to realise over the past few years is that, from my point of view at least, depression is a remarkably self-preserving illness. It doesn't want to be found out. Obviously this is a ridiculous statement on some levels - my depression does not, of course, have mental autonomy to scheme against me - but I think it holds a grain of truth. Depression often brings with it strong feelings of worthlessness and shame. If you feel worthless, why should you seek help? Only people with 'worth' deserve aid or care. And if you feel ashamed, why should you speak out - afraid as you are of being judged for what you admit?

And that is why I am writing this post. I am having a good stretch of days in the midst of a bad patch and I'm feeling ready to start trying to train that bloody dog. The lessons might not stick, of course - another truism I'm coming to learn about having depression is that expecting a one-time 'cure' may not necessarily be the best way to think about it - but at least it might retain the memory of them next time it comes back, and be more promptly quietened. So, I am coming out of my wardrobe, and speaking out. Because I am worth something, and having depression is nothing to be ashamed of.

Don't be afraid to step out of your closet, whether you have to fight through prejudice or, perhaps, the metaphorical Hound of the Baskervilles in order to put your hand against the door. It - and you - are always worth it.

Because a thesis just wasn't enough...

This year, for the first time, I am taking part in something that I have long been tempted by: I am 'doing' NaNoWriMo 2013. NaNoWriMo, if you haven't heard of it, stands for 'National Novel Writing Month', i.e. November, during which participants are encouraged to write a novel of 50,000 words or more. 

As this blog might imply, I truly enjoy writing, and I've felt a little sad over the last few years that I haven't invested much time in writing fiction, which is really where a love of writing all started for me. When I was sixteen I wrote and quite literally 'self-published' - i.e. printed out and bound up using an industrial stapler - a novel about the stone gargoyles and stained-glass angels of a village church coming to life on Midsummer's Eve, and sold it to friends, family, teachers, and anyone else who could be guilt-tripped into paying £3.50 for it in order to raise funds for a trip to China. I even sent it off, unsolicited, to a number of publishers, resulting in a cherished sheath of rejection letters.

So, this year I decided that this would be the year I finally did NaNoWriMo. To my pleasant surprise, when I mentioned this to Mr S he said that he had been thinking the exact same thing, so we're currently doing it together and cheer-leading / guilt-tripping one another on.

I am having a massive amount of fun. Perhaps out of an unconscious desire for an antithesis to the planning-heavy early days of the PhD, my brain produced an excellent premise for a novel on the night of October 31st, so rather than writing up any of my ready-plotted ideas I found myself leaping straight in on November 1st with absolutely no idea of where I was headed. I am now 12,839 words in and have only a hazy idea of what the next chapter will contain. Don't even ask me about an ending. But, instead of sleeping in for an extra half an hour in the morning, or falling asleep in front of yet another xojane article at the end of the day, I'm writing and disappearing into this whole fictional world.

It's also, ironically, making me both more productive in my academic work, and helping me to feel less stressed about the PhD. Mr S and I have got into the habit of trying to write half our daily 'quota' (you have to write at least 1666 words a day - plus an extra 20 at the end! - to get to 50,000) first thing in the morning, and it certainly wakes you up. The feeling of achievement of bashing out 1000 words before breakfast also certainly helps to keep up morale when turning to read Foucault (don't ask). And as for stress, well, let's just say that after writing 12,000 words in six days, writing 80,000 words over three years doesn't seem quite so bad. Obviously there's a lot more to a PhD than just writing by the skin of one's teeth, as I am with NaNoWriMo, but I also feel much happier about my initial plan of front-loading my research and having a real 'writing up' period in my last year (a tactic that is more unusual in the humanities than in the sciences, I think).

Is there anyone else out there doing NaNoWriMo? How are you finding it?

Next time... if I work up the courage, I might give you a synopsis of my novel, or at least the fifth of it that I've written so far!