The Artist’s Mind

The step by step guide of ladder building

I haven’t been able to make comics for a while and because I couldn’t make them I felt that I couldn’t make columns here because I had kinda promised comics.  The truth is that I didn’t actually promise comics in every column.  I promised art, life, comics and the things that happen in the margins.

What has been happening in the margins is that the thread of melancholy that I have lived with for nearly my whole life swelled into a smothering blanket of depression that I couldn’t manage to pull myself out from under. And even though there is this notion that suffering makes good art, I find suffering makes more suffering and suffering paralyzes my creative imagination and inhibits my ability to think of anything else except “the suffering”.

Our family has actually had a pretty awful year, and I pushed through our problems like a champ, bearing the load like only a mom can, stretching my time, our finances, my emotions and my health to make sure that we got through what we needed to get through. But this summer I spiralled down into this dark hole of suffering and compounded it with guilt for not being able to make comics or any kind of art, and that froze my ability to do anything creative at all, even writing here. 

And I sat in that hole for a long time.  I put on my mask for work and played the role of someone who felt good, and playing that role was exhausting.  I would put in my time and come home to collapse.  Working from home two days a week saved me because if I hadn’t had that I probably would have had a full-on breakdown at the office one day.

At some point, I came to the realization that I didn’t have to find a ladder out of the hole I was in because other people were there to help me build a ladder of my own. So I contacted my doctor and talked to my superiors at work. After taking antidepressants for a while, I managed to get enough willpower to call a therapist.  Rung by rung I began to build a ladder of support.

Am I still in the hole?  Yes.

But I can see the sky, and feel the breeze.  I am working every day to get out of the hole. People who love me take care of me and support my climb in every way they can.  Thanks for peeking into the hole to see me, I feel like I will see more of you as I keep building my ladder.