In the Shadow of the Black Dog 🐾

No, this isn’t going to be an extended advert for my next book (although, thinking about it, In the Shadow of the Black Dog would make a great book title … copyright J. T. Atkinson). It is, however, an examination of what it is be a writer living with the black dog, as Churchill described it. Living with depression ...

I have been battling with depression and all of its trappings (the highs and lows, the feelings of hopelessness, the debilitating, the strangulating hold that it exerts when it digs its claws into you) for as long as I can remember. Funnily enough, I have been writing stories for as long as I can remember too. I don’t know if there is any correlation between the two or if it is just coincidence since depression, unlike writing, is something that few people want to hear about, let alone discuss. Bring up the subject of writing, and all the frustrations and complications that writing entails, and other writers are more than happy to talk about it. If anything, posting a comment headed “Writer’s Problems!” inevitably leads to a flood of replies agreeing with the sentiment and a further deluge of well-wishers telling one to hang on in there as they know what it is like. Post a comment headed “Depressed” on the other hand and it’s like yelling “Shark” on Amity beach.

I do find it strange, though, as my writing and my depression do seem to be intrinsically linked. Please don’t think that I mean anything as trite as one causes the other. But there is no doubt in my mind that my depression has an effect on my writing and vice versa. When I am feeling at my worst and engage in a writing session there does seem to be a sense of relief when I am done. Of course, whether this is just a sense of relief at having finished another page of my new book it is hard to say.

Many famous writers have revealed mental health issues. Arthur Rimbaud spoke of having, “a look so lost, a face so dead, that perhaps those whom I met did not see me.” Sylvia Plath, who suffered severe depression and took her own life at the age of 30, spoke of “the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.” Even J. K. Rowling has talked openly about depression, describing it as an “absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope.” Indeed, the Guardian newspaper a few years back reported on US website health.com, stating that “writing is one of the top 10 professions in which people are most likely to suffer from depression.” If the latter findings are true and the former great and good have struggled and do struggle to cope, where does that leave a struggling writer like myself?

One of the oft-quoted causes of depression amongst writers is how much time they spend on their own. Whilst it is true that much of my work is done with me staring at a screen, tapping away at the keys, and consciously shutting out the world around me, I do not write for a living. In fact, in the grand scheme of things I think it is safe to say that most writers don’t. Most writers rely on the humble day job. Most of the writers that I know anyway. This means that we have the same concerns that most people do and most of these tend to be about paying the bills, the state of the country, and when the next series of Love Island will be. And, as Oscar Wilde once implied, we certainly don’t spend all of our time wondering about the placement of a comma. Some of our time, maybe …

And yet, the feeling is always there. It uncoils somewhere inside, snakes its way to the surface, and wraps its tendrils around. Medication controls it to a degree, but medication is a prescribed solution, so many pills a day regardless of how I feel. That leaves more practical solutions. Some swear by meditation. Others swear by exercise. I, however, swear by writing (and I don’t mean where that @#$!@:%* comma goes!). For me, it’s no coincidence that there has been a long-standing correlation between writers and depression since writing is the only thing that seems to offer any real relief for the black dog. Now, if you please excuse me, I’m feeling a bit down now. Time for a scribble!