 - Title image by Grace Maria Houseman A good friend once told me, “It’s not a sin to feel sad. Although some people often try to convince you it is.” We were sitting in our favourite cafe, nursing cups of strong, black coffee, and sharing a packet of cigarettes. “Most people can’t cope with having a friend who is depressed,” they added. “Because it makes them feel bad about themselves.” The ‘Tao of Pooh’ by Benjamin Hoff rested on the table between us. I’d loaned it from the library a few days prior. Perhaps an unusual choice for a horror fan, but I’ve always been a voracious reader of many genres. The book uses the fictional characters of A. A. Milne to explain the tenets of Taoism. Winnie-the-Pooh himself personifies the principals of pu, the “uncarved block,” and of wei we wei, the concept of "effortless doing.” My friend had told me earlier that they wanted to strive towards being like Pooh. “You know the most wonderful thing about everyone in ‘A Hundred Acre Wood’?” they asked me. I shook my head. I didn’t. “Everyone knows Eeyore struggles with his mental health, but they never try to change him, or offer unsolicited advice. They just keep on inviting him to stuff and being there for him, and finding his tail when it gets lost. They don’t think any less of him for his gloomy moods or his constant pessimism.” They picked up their cup of coffee and looked off into the distance with a wistful look on their face. “I wish I had the kind of friends that Eeyore does.” I was thirteen when the Black Dog found me. I know, that sounds rather like the first line of a book. At the time, I don’t think I knew what it was, or what it really meant for me. The Black Dog brought with it anxiety and depression, not long after puberty first raised its head. My parents, despite suffering from both afflictions themselves, were less than sympathetic. “It’s just teenage hormones,” they told me, dismissively. “Everyone feels like that sometimes.” But I was sceptical. Did everyone schedule time to cry — usually in the bath so they could sob in private, and blame their red eyes on soap — because they felt ashamed to show their real feelings? Did everyone pick at their fingers until they bled and stim with flaps of broken skin, even though the physical pain hurt so much, but the distraction felt so good? Did everyone go to sleep at night and secretly hope that they wouldn’t wake up. That they wouldn’t have to face yet another day where they somehow felt completely numb but overstimulated all at once? I didn’t know the answers. I was too afraid to ask. At age 15, when I was finally diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes after living with it unawares for 6 months, I tried again to tell my parents I wasn’t coping. That I thought I was depressed. I’d already worn two hearing aids since I was 11 thanks to nerve deafness, most likely a lasting side-effect of a meningitis virus caught at age 8. They told me I was “bound to feel down about it”, but it couldn’t possibly be “real” depression. I was, in their words, “too young.” The Black Dog exhaled its hot breath down my back and sniggered behind its paws, and I knew then it planned to stay with me for the long haul. Being brushed off by those I trusted the most taught me one hard lesson: don’t bother asking anyone for support, you won’t get any. It was a belief I carried with me throughout my life. If ever I got brave enough to ask for help, the help I found was lacking. My GP deemed me to be a “functional” depressive, and thus not in need of immediate intervention. I learned to cope. Admittedly in a number of terrible, destructive and unhealthy ways. But they were methods of coping nonetheless, and they kept me alive. The Black Dog followed me through university, where I found friends with similar imaginary “pets”. In retrospect that was a mistake. We fed off each other’s traumas and pain like some kind of emotional vampires. Revelling in our depressive states, we were all of us Eeyore’s, through and through, and none of us knew how to support each other. A group of Goths and Emo types; maybe we thought mental illness was just a part of being in the alternative scene? We were the stereotype “tortured artists”. I made excuses. I made many mistakes. Only God only knows how I managed to graduate. The Black Dog slavered at my heels as I tried and failed in many places of employment. Until I became an English teacher. Finally, I felt like I’d found somewhere I belonged, and the Black Dog hid for a long while. I also wrote and published my first books at this time — non-fiction, not horrific in the slightest. But as Alanis Morissette once sang, “Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you,” and it wasn’t long before the Black Dog returned. I’ll spare you the details of twenty years of rollercoaster-ing mental health. Suffice to say, wherever I went, my Black Dog followed. Sometimes it was huge and out of control, sometimes it was as tiny as a puppy. When I emigrated in 2017, oh boy, the Dog swelled and grew fucking mighty. But you don’t move 12,000 miles around the world and leave everything you once knew behind without discovering some hidden strengths in yourself. When the Black Dog caught up with me in my new home, I decided right then I was done with it. I’d survived in the past by compartmentalising. Or rather, not addressing the cause. It clearly didn’t work. I was an Eeyore, kidding myself that I was a Pooh because I was mostly “coping”. I never really progressed or faced my problems, too keen to blame others or some uncontrollable circumstance. Too quick to anger or to cry. I wanted to do more and do better, and reach a stage where the Black Dog, if not euthanised, was at least tamed and controlled. I worked hard on myself to be the person I sought to be. To follow my passions and find genuine happiness in my life. To actually live, not merely survive. Then my friend killed herself. The Black Dog rose up on its hind legs and howled until it was hoarse. And I did the same. I was broken. I thought maybe beyond repair. Writing was the only thing that helped. The only way I could properly express myself without cracking into a thousand pieces and retreating into a dark shell. I wrote of pain. I wrote of loss. I wrote over and over of guilt and regret. “We are all dying, every day. We know it. We feel it. But we try to pretend we can ignore it, as a small part of us flickers like a fading star, waiting to be smothered by the night.” I didn’t start out writing horror, in fact, if I’m honest, I’m not really sure if what I write is really horror at all. If pushed I might say I write “gothic horror,” “weird fiction” or “dark fantasy.” I’ve never really been very good with pigeonholes or labels. I very rarely set out to write something strange, that part always seems to nudge its way in afterwards. Whatever it is, however you categorise it, it is a necessary salve on my wounds. Horror doesn’t have to be the usual and expected Other — a monster lurking underneath the bed, or a slavering hound at your door. Horror can be loneliness, doubt and loss. Horror can be being the new girl at the office, knowing no-one and missing her old life, trusting the wrong person and making bad choices. It can be a devastating cancer diagnosis; or the sudden death of a parent or child. These things affect us, they are in our lives and our thoughts every day. Absolutely nothing is guaranteed to us. We make the best of what we can. I’ve used my experiences of depression as a catalyst to create some extremely dark stories. It feels very comforting that by confronting the Black Dog in fiction I can keep it from sniffing too close at my heels. The reaction of creating in response to hardship helps to not only distract me from the emotional pain, but to allow me to focus on my talents and abilities. It gives me something to cling to, some bright sliver of hope. More than that, it helps me make sense of myself. I write to make myself feel better, and I believe that writing for mental health is not the same as writing about mental health. Exploring and confronting the darker, more complex side of your emotions, especially through the horror and dark fiction genres, is an important and useful strategy in establishing a positive mental space, but I also think it is simpler than that. Writing — for the pure enjoyment of writing — brings focus. Pouring a part of yourself into something you create is both liberating and invigorating. It allows you to take time to explore your thoughts and emotions in the way you need to. And the Black Dog? Sometimes I can hear it snoring under the bed, but it doesn’t scare me now. I’m not that pessimistic Eeyore any more, spending all my time in a Gloomy Place and moping about my lost tail. Rather than trying to beat my Black Dog, I have learned to live with it. Sometimes I let it out for a while, sometimes I even take it for a walk, but writing horror has helped me tame it. It gives me strength and the courage to return it to its cage.  Tabatha Wood lives in New Zealand and writes weird, dark fiction and uplifting poetry. Despite her obsession with the strange and unusual, she considers herself mostly harmless. A former English teacher and library manager, Tabatha now teaches from home while writing in her spare time. She released her debut collection, “Dark Winds Over Wellington: Chilling Tales of the Weird & the Strange” in March 2019. Since then she has had short stories published in a number of antipodean horror magazines. Tabatha is the lead editor in a team of twelve for the “Black Dogs, Black Tales” anthology. The collection aims to raise money and awareness for the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand and will be published by ’Things In The Well Press’ in May 2020. You can read more of her writing on her website https://tabathawood.com and her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/tlwood.wordweaver/ Dark Winds Over Wellington: Chilling Tales of the Weird & the Strange Welcome to Wellington, the Coolest Little Capital, where nothing is quite what it seems… Strange creatures lurk in the shadows of the Beehive, while a Beast arises From The Deep determined to destroy us all. Being Neighbourly might just change your life, and if you listen closely you can hear demonic Whispers in the wind. So sit back, take a sip of A Good Cup of Coffee and question all The Things You See. In the city there are no Second Chances and every chapter might be your last. Inspired by Wellington legends and folklore, these thirteen original short stories will drag you on a chilling journey through the eerie, the weird and the strange. You can buy the Print On Demand paperback at Amazon and eBook version at Smashwords Dark Winds Over Wellington: Chilling Tales of the Weird & the Strange © Tabatha Wood, 2019. Published by Wild Wood Books.  Comments are closed.
|
Archives
April 2023
|
RSS Feed
|
|