Mental Health and Writing

By Erin Shuster, Senior Poetry Editor; Edited by Mae McDermott, Deputy Editor and Blog Coordinator

I Think I Saw You In My Dreams by Carly Hough

When I was 18, I stopped writing for two years. This wasn’t a decision I actively made. It kind of just happened. I pushed this part of myself aside because I did not want to acknowledge what I was going through. I crammed my journals onto the highest, dustiest shelf in my room and I let my words, and the memories they carried, wither away.

Once I abandoned them, I couldn’t bring myself to touch them. Instead I looked at them from afar when I was laying in bed late at night. If I squinted hard enough, I was able to make out the colors on each cover. I could remember what I wrote about in each journal just by looking at them. Each journal represented a different phase in my life. The spiral-bound, striped, multicolored one was filled with songs about my first crush in middle school. The spiral-bound, turquoise one with orange-edged pages was filled with weepy and drunk ramblings about a boy from writing camp that consumed my every thought for the last two years of high school. The soft, coral one was filled with sad and wistful thoughts about my past.

Sometimes I was tempted to open them and scribble all over their pages. I wanted to ruin what I had written so it would feel like I was taking back everything I had ever done. With no record, I could have a clean slate. I could become an entirely new person. The idea of complete reinvention was so tempting. I could destroy all evidence of the person I once was and become a person that is lovable and lighthearted and forgiving. All I knew how to do was hold onto my pain. I was ashamed of the decisions I had made and the people I had let influence me in a negative way. I let them permeate every aspect of my life. I felt like I couldn’t shake them so I stored them in my journals, which made them seem smaller and less important. Some nights I would get so close to grabbing my journals and burning them but in the end, I let them live.

And while I decided to keep them around for a little longer, I knew that they were dangerous. If I attempted to flip through their pages, I knew I would encounter an unpleasant emotion or a memory so triggering that it would send me into a depressive episode. The idea of tapping into old emotions, or any emotions at all, frightened me. So I did my best to avoid feeling. I stopped doing anything that could elicit an unpredictable emotional response. I didn’t listen to any new music. I only listened to albums and playlists that I was familiar with. I didn’t read because I was afraid of what I would think about in the silence. I didn’t write any new poems or journal entries. I only wrote little blurbs in my phone about my general observations. I kept distance from my emotions by grounding my actions and thoughts in the superficial and unsubstantial. By doing this, I was safe from my dark and painful emotions. I was afraid that if I accessed them, I would never be able to recover.

Before I stopped writing, I stopped going to college. I was in my second semester of my freshman year at Fairfield University, and I was absolutely miserable. During the first few months of school, I felt lonely and melancholy but I brushed these feelings off. I figured I needed more time to find my footing and once I did, everything else would fall into place.Over winter break, I felt more optimistic about going back for my next semester. I had a good feeling that things were going to be different when I returned. I just had a month off, which gave me ample time to recuperate from the previous semester.

But I was wrong. If anything, I was more miserable than I was before. I had faced bouts of depression before, but never like this. I felt a strange indifference inside of me and I isolated myself from everyone. I only talked to my roommates because I never left our dorm room. I never left my bed, not even to eat; I just ordered food to my building instead. I’ve had body image issues for most of my life, but never like this. I felt swollen in all of my clothes. I couldn’t bring myself to shower because I didn’t want to look at my body. I gained so much weight that I didn’t look like myself anymore. I only managed to get myself up for class because I felt like that was the least I could do. In my mind, if I couldn’t do this, then that meant that I really was as worthless as I felt.

But even when I did make it successfully to class, I usually had to leave halfway through to go to the nearest bathroom, lock myself in a stall, and sob. Sometimes I would sit on the toilet, put my head in my hands, and cry until it felt like there was nothing left in me. Sometimes I would sink into the dusty corner of the stall and curl up into a little ball. I would wrap my arms around my legs and let tears roll down my face while I stared blankly at the tile pattern on the floor. It seemed that with every venture out into the world, beyond the confinements of my dorm, I somehow ended up in a bathroom. With each trip, I lost more of the person I knew myself to be. The more I found myself staring at bathroom floors, walls, and stall doors, the more I started to think that I wasn’t going to get her back.

A month later I was home and as confused as ever. I had no idea where I was going from here. I tried writing about how I was feeling, but it was too excruciating. It felt like my heart was getting ripped out when I put my pen to paper.

I wish I could say I knew what I did to reclaim my voice. I don’t know why I stopped being afraid of myself and what was going to come next in my life. I didn’t wake up one day, realize that I needed writing back in my life and start journaling immediately. I didn’t write a collection of poems chronicling my experience at Fairfield (though I did this later on), and I didn’t furiously type out all of my feelings on my computer. There wasn’t a method that worked for me. Time and treatment for my anxiety and depression definitely helped. With support, I got better. I was still hurting, but I was better.

While I don’t have a concrete answer, I can say that I have never written about this ordeal until now, almost three years after I left Fairfield. I was so paralyzed by my freshman year that it left me numb. I thought that I was broken. I thought that I would never have a good college experience. What if this was something I was going to deal with for the rest of my life? But over time I started to realize that this was another turning point in my life. This would not define me.

Even though I resented it at first, I started going to therapy. It never worked for me in the past but I knew that I had to start somewhere. I worked part-time and I tried to learn how to spend time with myself. I needed to get comfortable being alone with my emotions.

 I never wanted to have to go through a change like this, but when I think of where I am now, all I can see is my growth. I’m at a new school where I am happy, healthy, and pursuing a major that I love. I needed to reach what felt like one of the lowest points in my life to rediscover who I was. I finally confronted the sadness and shame I carried for so long. It was all I wanted to write about, but I was afraid to do it. I didn’t know if I would unearth something ugly that I wouldn’t be able to discard. Eventually, I was able to do this because I stopped being afraid of my past. I started to let go of the burdens I associated with my memories and accepted them as they were: hard, real experiences.

Facing oneself is the essence of writing. It demands for the writer to examine their innermost thoughts and draw meaning. It calls for acknowledgement and ownership. It can be terrifying and deeply rewarding. It took me a long time to admit that I was afraid to write because I thought it was such a foolish thing to be afraid of. Being afraid of writing down your thoughts sounded irrational. Then I realized that by accessing the traumatizing events in my life, I could create something beautiful and meaningful. The only thing that was stopping me from doing so was myself. While it was difficult to retrieve memories I tried to suppress for so long, it has also been cathartic. For the first time in my life, I am not scared of my truth. I am empowered by my struggles and the stories that define me. I was finally able to regain my sense of creativity and use my voice.