I am a misery sponge

Trying to find my “happy place”

As some of you already know (because I won’t shut up about it), I’ve been researching and writing about the death of Annie McCann. For a couple of weeks I was immersed in the story. I got stuck in, reading everything I could, trying to understand what happened, asking questions and, of course, writing about it (and then pitching and being ignored over and over again).

I went down the rabbit hole.

I had to back off for a week because I started having awful dreams, I was thinking about the case constantly, horrific images would pop into my head at strange moments. I was having trouble switching off.

It’s a catch 22: I care, so I want to write about these things, but because I care it really gets to me.

I am soaking up other people’s grief because I feel I owe it to them. They shared their story with me, shared their pain with me, and my way of repaying that is to empathise as fully as I can.

I will continue to follow Annie’s story, it’s far from over. And I’ve picked up a second case that is equally as distressing, both in terms of the loss of young life and the complete failure of the justice system to do right by the deceased and their family.

Being a misery sponge isn’t going to work if I want to keep doing this, though.

Writing about my own problems or pain may be therapeutic, but writing about other people’s, not so much.

I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to go about this. I think, though, that I will start by making Medium a “happy place” where I can write about the lighter stuff, and maybe steer clear of reading the really dark stuff. (So, if I stop commenting on your sad stories, please don’t think it’s because I don’t care.)

I’m also curious to know how other people deal with writing about really nasty stuff. I’ve spoken to one journalist who said they just take a break, get offline and simply stop for a bit. If anyone else has strategies that work, I’d love to hear.