An analysis of the writings of a severely depressed mind

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Does anyone ever make a collection of your old writings?

Since a lot of people here have dealt with depression, have you ever looked at the writings from the worst of it?


I've been chronologically organizing my writings, and looking over what survived during my worst years (2001-2004), it's a somewhat unsettling experience.

I was pretty bad growing up, but about a year after the total isolation started (2000, with the graduation from high school), my writings start to get downright... twisted.

Then, at the beginning of May of 02, my writings... stop. From files on my hard drive to what I have been able to recover from my primary message board, almost no documents at all exist from May of 02 to June of 04. And the ones that did are either school papers or... chilling.

I wrote up a bunch of paragraphs after this, but they went off on a wild tangent that I'll probably just put in my blog.



Do any of you look back to the writings created during the worst of your depressions?

If so, what do you think of them?

I only write poetry when I feel like slittling my wrists,so they tend to be a little on the bleak side.I am the only person I have ever met who likes my poetry....imagine that.

Yup funnily enough two days ago found some writing I did about two years ago, at that point I thought EVERYONE thought exactly the same way as me, I was convinced every single person was lieing in every single interaction with me, I was very angry, and wrote the most hateful commentary, it was eye opening to say the least..

It brought me to tears, but also showed me how far I've grown since then..

Still pretty valid.


WHEN
When you're on the highest dosage
And it isn't half enough,
When your nights are torn and twisted with the pain
When the sleep you get is really rather futile
For it only brings the nightmares once again.

When you need someone to talk to
But your friends have had their fill.
When the doctor knows the problem but cannot cure the ill

When your faith lies dead and broken
And all others seem as frail,
When a day of aching struggle
Wins another just the same,
When crying does no good and you're just too tired to scream
When hope is never present and pleasure rarely seen,

When the happiness of others gives the painful contrast one more time,
When the hollowness inside is sounding like a drum,
When love and laughter have finally fled.

Then, just then,
You'll be close to the place where I dwell
It's a place you might call hell.

My own work, with apologies to Rudyard Kipling.


I'm currently trying something very different and, as Kipling also said:
"And I think it will kill me or cure,
So I think I will go there an' see."

I used to go back and reread stuff I'd written but I kept finding it horribly pretentious and angsty so I started either trashing it, burning it or deleting it.

that poen was pretty good

Last edited by teel on 18 Oct 2006, 9:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Wow, that is beautiful! The melancholy is so intense.

yeah, i've said in another post that i used to keep journals and scraps of notes/observation, but i think that reflecting on these thoughts only made my state of mind or depression/whatever worse.

i try not to overanalyze my past too much. i tend to think forward to better things.

Thank you, Teel and Starbuline.

I've written a very few poems arising out of my depression and despair, but I've not really grown past them, or away from them, in the past five years.

But them I am older (50) and not so liable to rapid changes of development, unless subject to some sort of Damascus Road level revelation or change of understanding. That can't be ruled out, but I'm not counting it likely.

If I go back further I don't generally find my thinking or recorded moods embarrassing or odd, but my use of English occasionally annoys me. That, at least, has improved somewhat.