What do you think? Can dissociation fuel creativity? Can depression and dissociation be a catalyst for art? At least in my life, dissociation and art are very intermingled.
I read some old journals today.
I look back now and I wish there was more of me in the pages I spent so much time tracking. Instead, I see shadows of a girl overpowered by a need for love and attachment. I wonder sometimes if she was as happy as she believed, because the words and stories she tells are fluffy and lack reality.
And then I look at me now.
I feel detached from my previous self, as though I never knew her — let alone was her. But I feel so solidly me. I grasp for the meaning of these feelings, sensing an important message from my soul’s root, but it’s too deep for me to bring into words.
When I find myself in these moments, I feel completely detached from myself; but this depression and dissociation is a catalyst for my art. Dissociation fuels creativity; I can’t feel so I have to express.
Perhaps it’s the development of wisdom.
I have loved humanity;
I have been betrayed by humanity;
I have loved humanity more deeply
by knowing her cruelty.
There’s darkness in the world
I refused to accept as a child.
I feel old
in the evening.
When the sun sets.
When the rest of the world
goes to bed.
I feel the gray
hairs sprouting, and the wrinkles
carving themselves into my face.
I watch the smoothness of my skin dapple and splotch.
It was only a
moment
ago I wondered if
I
would ever feel like an adult.
How I have aged today
, this year
, the last
It’s like there are two levels to my emotions.
The surface emotions — and by surface I mean those I actively FEEL, not those that I only express to others — are happy. I feel productive. I feel powerful. I feel joyous and capable and headed in the right direction. I feel loved and connected, supported and accepted, at peace with who I am and excited for who I am becoming. I won’t lie and say I never feel stressed or upset; life is life, and that means sometimes I feel bad. But these bad moments pass quickly, and I feel resilient in handling them.
But it’s almost as if below this emotional well-being lurks a torrent of deep sadness, insecurity, apathy, and anxiety. For the most part, it doesn’t even seem to exist, but if I’m really quiet or think really hard, I can feel its vibrations in the pit of my stomach. And sometimes, when a particularly stressful bad moment makes me cry or clench my muscles, it breaks free.
When it comes, I feel like I need to sing or write or somehow express the depth of this nasty creature inside of me — as if exposing it to sunlight will make it wilt away.
When it leaves, I wonder if it’s possible to transform it into something good and powerful. Because on the other side of it is hope.