Misplaced Romanticism

I'm fascinated by the plights of artists and the often amazing, albeit tragic, art that comes about as a result of their pain and suffering. Van Gogh, Hemingway and Cobain may have lived in different times and used different mediums to express themselves, but all of them were masters of their respective crafts and all of them suffered from the same hideous, debilitating disease that eventually caused them to take their own lives.

I can understand how it happened. As the years went by and their brains decayed, they spiraled deeper and deeper into despair until they were so low that they firmly believed the only way out was with the shovel they used to dig their own grave.

I have to wonder if they had moments of clarity leading up to their demise where they stepped outside of themselves and thought "I am in real trouble, I need help." Or did they just head down that dark path without looking back?

As the years have passed, their deaths have come to be romanticized to the point that we forget the brutal truth - that they were sick. It is hard to avoid the bitter irony that the same condition that helped them create such beauty is also the condition that drove them to commit suicide. People have theorized at length about the correlation between creativity and mental illness. College courses have been built around it, people have given speeches about it, scientists have studied it and I have to wonder if that kind of awareness has helped to save lives.

Suffering from depression myself, I know that when I sink to the black place it's a vacuum of my own creation that prevents me from really understanding that I'm not the only one that feels this way. That's the problem with a vacuum - it consumes everything, including rational thought.

Steps from Inspiration

When I lived in LA I truly believed that moving to New York would make me happy. I had always thought that the lifestyle would fit me like a glove - living the second half of my life in a small apartment in the big city with lots of books, my cat and all the inspiration this bustling metropolis could provide. I thought it would be the perfect setting for me to write that novel that I would option for a couple million and firmly establish my place in pop culture.

And here I am - living on a block on the Upper West Side that would make even Nora Ephron jealous, surrounded by nothing but inspiration and I can't even bring myself to go outside. If no one is counting on me to be somewhere, I find it nearly impossible to leave my apartment. I don't want anyone to look at me - I can't stomach what I  think they must think of me and my appearance. It doesn't help that I have to pass a huge mirror as I'm walking out of my building. If I happen to glance at my reflection I will almost certainly have some form of an anxiety attack and go back inside my apartment to scour my closet for clothes that are more flattering - clothes I already know I don't own, but I look anyway.

And so my workday begins on a note of deep self-loathing that is only magnified by being completely isolated at work. Not that my coworkers are bad people - they're not - we just don't have anything in common. Amazingly enough, the three other women that make up our team of four are all getting married. Talk about being the odd man out - I'm not even in a relationship. Needless to say, I have nothing to contribute to their incessant conversations about wedding rings, wedding receptions, wedding planners, wedding cakes...and even scarier, all of these conversations will eventually mutate into discussions about baby showers, baby names, baby furniture and baby clothes. And that will officially push me over the edge.

I suppose all of this would be easier to stomach if I had a job that was in any way gratifying. I have a job that "a million girls would kill for," or at least they think that they would. But just like my believing that moving to New York was going to make me happy, my job is not all it's cracked up to be - at least I don't think it is. To be honest, nothing in my life has ever been the solution to my problems in the way I'd hoped it would be.

Which can only mean that this emptiness I feel transcends geography and careers. I suspect it's tied into body image, but I've managed to sabotage every attempt I've ever made to fix that one too. So I can only ask myself, what did I ever do to me that makes me hate me so much that I can't stop "going all medieval on my ass?" More importantly, what's it going to take to get me to stop?!