Themes Gleaming Darkly Part 2 - Mental Illness

Building off of Part 1 - Representation, another personal facet I feel that it is important for me to write about is mental illness.

To get it out there, I have been diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder and I do take medication. I do not see a therapist, mainly for financial reasons, but it is another step in my journey I hope to take soon.

It is important for me to write about characters with mental illness because of the stigma surrounding it. The portrayals of mental illness we get are typically shallow and single-sided. But that isn't what anxiety and depression look like.

My story Bubble is very dear to me for this reason. Much like Plath's Bell Jar, The Bubble encapsulates Adam. He is isolated. He can communicate with others, but there is a literal and emotional distance between them. He tries in a way that he knows how to ask for help but cannot accept it when it's offered to him.

The ocean that surrounds The Bubble is how I envision my depressive tendencies. I go about my life and try to be healthy, but sometimes it gets through. Just as the ocean won't go away, neither will my mental illness. Sometimes it ruins the things I enjoy, as the leak in The Bubble destroys Adam's books and magazines. He tries his best to salvage what he can.

At times in my life, I worry that the leak will become a flood and I won't survive. Sometimes it causes me to slip into dissasociative states and I could lay in bed for days if I didn't have to go to work or get things done.

For many years, writing has been a coping mechanism. I write about myself and my feelings, my experiences, at a distance and that helps to understand them.

Writing about Adam, stuck alone under the sea, isn't meant to drag anyone down. I hope that at least one person who reads it sees that someone else has felt the way they feel.

That, I think, is the most I could ever hope for my writing.