How writing helped me with depression
We’ve all had negative thoughts as teenagers but the first time I really felt depression was in my second year of college. My parents and my siblings were my everything. They were the ground that kept me strong.
I was studying and working two jobs at the time when everything fell apart. We all separated from each other and many bad things followed. I tried to help everybody, but it just took away more and more of me day by day. And one day I just couldn’t anymore.
Everything died in me. I felt nothing. Life felt meaningless. Days just flew by as I laid on my couch empty. I couldn’t say anything to anyone. They were all worried about their own things, I thought my friends wouldn’t understand because there was still a little bit of stigma talking about mental health so I thought I was alone in this until I started to draw lines on a paper.
Just lines of thoughts that I had. I’ve let my hand guide the mind. I drew trees, clocks, gibberish and more. It helped me calm my mind and stay focused in my classes. Sometimes a word would come out of it, sometimes two words until eventually I started writing again.
I didn’t like it, but I forced myself. It was painful to write the things I was quiet about. But pain was good because pain was a feeling and feelings were something I lost along the way. Writing down made me safe and it felt like I wasn’t alone. It gave me a perspective of what I was angry about, what made me feel this way, why can’t I get out of it. And the moment I divided my feelings, it started to feel less like a big word like depression but something even I could tackle.
So I did everything there was. Every night I wrote 10 things I was grateful for. I wrote whenever I was overwhelmed by the feelings or nothingness. I yelled in my writings, cursed and spilled every inch of my soul that I had. I tried to write about beautiful things like nature but it never seemed good. One day I got angry because everything was still gloomy and I really worked hard on fixing that. Until I realized this didn’t happen over night so the fixing isn’t going to happen over night either.
So I just kept writing and I never stopped. Whenever a feeling overwhelms me, I spit it on the paper and leave it for the paper to carry it. This way I can hope never to be locked by my feelings like that again and hope to be free of the negativity.
I hope you too try writing or drawing as therapy because it helps overcome problems and overwhelming feelings in a productive way. You never know what good will come out of your pain.
