Hello again and welcome back to Stories That Must Not Die. Today I am honored to provide our very first post from someone outside of the core group that runs this site:
Please spend some time visiting Quintn’s site when you get a moment, and show him a bit of the support and encouragement that is going to make this community one of the greatest in the blogosphere.
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Sometimes I think that human depression is caused from an unfortunate mixture of empathy and imagination. Empathy opens you up to dark feelings that aren’t even yours, and imagination makes these feelings real and able to hurt you.
Just to keep yourself safe, you start to close off any vulnerabilities you see in yourself. You patch them up so the feelings that follow can’t wriggle their way in and burrow inside you.
You feel proud of yourself for cleverly blocking off the hole in your chest. You don’t even mind the emptiness. The emptiness is safe. You care store all sorts of things in the emptiness. Usually some cash-money.
Everything seems to be going okay for a while. You’re lying to yourself, and you know you’re lying to yourself, but you don’t think it matters because everyone lies to themselves.
Material things do a good enough job filling the hole. You’d use something better if you had some idea of what that was, but you don’t. Maybe Jesus could fill the hole for you, but you don’t really trust him after two-thousand years of child crusades and inquisitions. Besides, you’ve visited too many museums to believe the earth is 6000 years old. So instead you just wait…
When you get like this you don’t ever want to leave your bed. You know when they’re this close it’s only a matter of time, so you hide to delay the inevitable. The only way you can manage any interaction is to become a quiet, lonely starchild who loves with the cold distance of a terrible ice demon or human father.
You let it in and the hole is filled. You feel a little less empty, but you can’t help but feel calloused, uncaring. You’re content with yourself but you don’t want anyone to see you. And you let it consume you, fearful of what may someday emerge from the void-egg around you.
~Fin
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Quintn Parker is a college student who draws happy pictures when he’s sad. He collects his writings and drawings at Waitingforsatan.com.
I love the humor in the pictures, but yeah, that hit really close to home… Especially the part about being on top of a mountain, far away from everything else…
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Yes, this was funny. The pictures and the accompanying text were very clever.
I just found it also terrifying. By the time that horrible dark force settles into this heart, I wasn’t laughting anymore.
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It’s sad. And truthful. Not all depression happens this way, but a lot does. Mine didn’t. It was a lot more insidious. The pictures were humorous in a dark way, and I guess that was the point.
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I really love your illustrations, Quintn. Reminded me of my of a comic. Sadly, I can relate. I think a staggering amount of individuals can also. Thanks so much for sharing.
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Hi Quintn. Thank you for sharing this. I really like your drawings and can understand the sayings…”did you really think you could escape”… and “no, come on in”. I wish we could bar the door. Thank you again.
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Hey Quintn, thank you for sharing your story here.
I feel like I can recognize myself in a few of those drawings, and I’m sure there are a lot of other people who will also. Building awareness, building community, building support… we’re on our way.
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I can relate to this, in a way. But I found depression safe…
…because mania, even slight mania, usually meant shit was going to hit the fan. So I find those depression monsters more seductive, alluring, as in “yes, you don’t want to ride that wild bull. Yessss, come back down, where the bears are.” And I’d figure, yeah, I’d rather have bears roar and snuff a lot, and maybe slowly get mauled, then get gored several times quickly.
Welllllll that was morbid, wasn’t it? Sorry.
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Hi Quintn,
I, like a lot of the others above, can relate to this all too well. That last image, alone on the mountain, consumed by the darkness, illustrates it perfectly.
Thank you for sharing this on here.
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Absolutely brilliant and too true. My major depressive disorder works almost exactly this way. I call mine Eeyore.
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