The Happiness of Feeling Sad

Hi. My name is Belle, and I'm a self-sadist.

For those of you that didn't get the memo, self-sadocism is a term I just invented. No, I haven't yet approached the OED about it, but I'm predicting it's only a matter of time until it gets in there. I like making myself sad. Not 'sad' in the Alan Partridge meaning of the word (i.e. a loser - although, there are some that would argue that), I mean 'sad' in the literal sense. To put it in context, I've just got out of a bubble bath, complete with scented candle, in which I drank a glass of wine and read some fucking depressing poetry. Cliché much? Yes. But I feel great about it. Let me elaborate.

I believe the greatest art in the world - be that poetry, music, or actual painting, sculpture, etc - has been made by those who are feeling sad or depressed. It turns out that's not just my opinion. I read an article last year about how creativity is closely intertwined with an individual's depression, whether that be manic or clinical, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or even substance abuse (1-0 to drug addicts.). Case studies in this article included Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland, renowned for his heavy use of opiates (well, I mean, how else would you come up with a narcotic caterpillar who speaks in rhyme). Virginia Wolf was as famous for her depression as she was for her novels. And it's not just novelists: Winston Churchill, Vincent Van Gogh, and Einstein are other notable individuals who suffered from different kinds of depression throughout their lives. So why, exactly, does sadness and depression inspire such an outpouring of creativity - and why do we value the results? 

This post is going in the Relationships/Rants section of my blog. If you read any of those, it might be fairly clear that they are generally written at times when I've been ruminating over an event that's made me angry, hurt, sad, or depressed (yes, there is a difference between the last two). Wish List Mondays and Tune Tape Tuesdays are all very nice and I enjoy doing them, but in my opinion, my best writing is done when I actually feel something. And that something is usually sadness, in its many shapes and forms. I only really started writing last summer. I had split up from a guy I believed was the love of my life, and, to be honest, I was a complete mess; a breakup cliché. I didn't leave the house for days. I couldn't sleep, but when I did, I slept for 14 hours straight. I 'Hemingway-ed' it to the max: sitting in darkened rooms, drinking far more than my "recommended daily allowance", and chainsmoking my way through the best part of 20 a day. Thankfully, I had the clearheadedness to realise that this couldn't become my actual lifestyle forever, or, if it did, I should at least have something to show for it. So I opened up a Word Document, and I started writing. I wrote everything that I was thinking; everything that I couldn't bring myself to say to him, all of the memories I had of our relationship, and all of my dashed hopes of a future together. 20,000 words and a Summer later, I was better, and looking back on it now is strangely life-affirming:


4^th July, 2012
When we broke up, I used to say that my soul felt like it had been pushed down a flight of stairs. It was the only way I could think of to describe the pain I felt inside. Although its bruises have healed, the scars remain, and it still limps a little. Do you remember when I asked you that time in Brixton if you had been unhappy? You shook your head and said “no, it just wasn’t perfect.”


I'm not saying my Summer ramblings were the stuff of artistic genius. But what I am saying is that I know that my personal best is made when I can't contain what I'm feeling. I guess that when REAL geniuses 'forge their metals', we can instinctively click into their troubled psyches. Which, in my books, is as pretty close to real magic as you can get without waving a wand and going to Hogwarts. Some people believe that embracing the outpourings of depressive individuals 'romanticises' the disorder. I don't personally see the bad in that. As a society, I think we're too quick to ostracise those who struggle to control, maintain, and manage their emotions; those whose membranes are so fragile that the world osmoses through them far quicker than others. Coming from an all-girls boarding school, admitting that you had clinical depression was basically announcing you were bat-shit crazy and were going to go rock back and forth in your room and stab a voodoo doll. For those with a penchant for statistics, one in four of us will experience depression at some points in our lives, and in my opinion, it's a fucking shame that a very high proportion of those that do are too scared to seek help because of what other people think. Personally, I think 'romanticising' depression is the least of your worries; I mean, at least it's getting some recognition. I can also vouch for creative outpourings - whatever medium they come out in - being far better for you than taking some meds and shutting up shop. 

Just like people suggest men 'get in touch with their feminine side' once in a while, I think that we all need to get in touch with our inner-depressive. Which is why I like making myself feel sad once in a blue moon (colour-appropriate). Give me Leonard Cohen, a large glass of wine, and some poetry by Pablo Neruda, and you'll make me a very happy sad person. 


Who else is a self-sadist?

Love,
Belle x

Love, Actually.

I'm a big fan of animated shorts. No, not dancing pants, you smart arses - short films, often computer-animated or in pixilation. Pixar's been doing these for years, usually showing them just before cinema screenings of their full-length feature films, but in the last 5 years short films have come on in leaps and bounds. Helped in part with a nod of recognition by awards from big-name bodies such as the Oscars and Sundance, and aided by advancements in computer and graphic animation, animated shorts and short films are fast becoming the most modern and groundbreaking area of cinema. A great website for checking these out is http://www.shortoftheweek.com. Give it a browse, you'll be surprised at the stuff that's out there. A few of my favourites include French Roast (a charming little French animation about the kindness of strangers), Alma ('Alma' means 'soul' in Spanish - watch it to understand), and The Division of Gravity (a slightly pretentious but nonetheless accurate depiction of the life and death of a relationship). My all-time favourite is actually used for a music video for what I think is an incredible track by the Drum'n'Bass artist S.P.Y. It uses clips from a short film by Spize Jonze called I'm Here so effectively and beautifully that you wouldn't know it wasn't an official music video. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's the best music video (unofficial or otherwise) I have ever seen. If you do nothing else with your day, watch it: 

To me, this is love. Love, I believe, is different for everyone. It changes with age, with the person whom you are loving, and the way in which you express it. I always said I'd know when I was in love when I could honestly say that I would willingly give my life to another. So far, I've only been able to say that twice. When I love someone, I usually write a lot. Lyrics, journals, poems - it's my way of making something intangible, tangible; something I fear to be fleeting, permanent. Unfortunately, after relationships end, these are not things that you want to cart around with you to remind you of what once was, so I tend leave them at home. However, being back for Christmas, and watching By Your Side, inspired me to dig them out, for, (to quote Love Actually) "if you can't say it at Christmas, when can you say it...". 

The first thing I found was a book. It was given to me for Christmas in 2009 by my first serious boyfriend of over a year, and contains our whole relationship in its pages. He had painstakingly retrieved and glued in all our letters, emails, pictures and songs we had penned together, for one another, and I had added to it after our relationship ended. In it, I found lyrics that I had written when I was 17 - lyrics that symbolised what love meant to me at that age. Here is a snippet of what I wrote:

Light two candles in the dark,

One for me, one for my heart

Make a wish and blow them out -

No secret who I wish about.

Will you stay and never leave?

No need to doubt as I believe

That we can make it you and me

No arguments, I guarantee

(Chorus)

Here's a song I wrote for you,

Nothing special but it'll do

Remember me when you hear this play

A way of being with you every day.

Ok, so it's not Shakespeare. Or even Bob Dylan. But it's a testament of love as a teenager, in it's wholesome, naive and optimistic glory. I decided to keep digging, and eventually came across a more recent artefact of romantic ramblings from the last year: a journal I had kept over the summer. In amongst the inane day-to-day recording of my life, I had written what love meant to me at this time, for a different person, nearly 4 years later:

"It is a feeling that never goes away, it is a longing, an unwavering certainty that you would do anything for that other person - even so far as giving your own life for theirs...I can’t think of anyone who would love you so unconditionally, so unselfishly, and who would do so much for you - come what may. That embraces and loves your merits and your flaws equally...I believe, in love, you accept and adore the imperfections, the quirks - it’s what makes the other person interesting. It’s what makes them them..."

After thinking about it for a while, I started to wonder what other peoples' 'meaning' of love was, so, rather than listen to some Leonard Cohen or Coldplay, I decided to conduct a little survey. Here are the results:

1. Have you ever said 'I Love You' and didn't mean it?

57% of you said YES

2. Have you ever truly been in love?

86% of you said YES

As a follow-up question, I then asked: What does being in love mean to you? I've decided to keep this anonymous, but here are some of your answers...

• "Being able to be completely yourself and not worry about scaring them away because you're both as strange as each other!" 
• "Knowing there is one person you can truly trust and rely on, knowing that you never have to make apologies or compromise who you are, knowing that feelings are honest and true and are going to last, knowing that when everything else around you falls apart you still have that one person who has this exclusive ability to make everything better, knowing that there is only one."
• "Feeling as though there is nothing that can not be conquered! You are completely safe and yet as free as you want to be. No fear or apprehension, just pure belief."
• "Being totally comfortable with someone whilst at the same time finding them sexy beyond belief, to enjoy them taking care of you and vice versa. I think although you should always have trust and belief in the relationship, it's good to have a knowledge that if they left you, your life, as you know it, would end..."
• "Having complete trust in the other person and knowing they do in you. And wanting to share every success, failure & experience with them as you know they will love you whatever."
• "So many things - it is laughing like you never have, smiling ear to ear, crying over the smallest argument and feeling every inch of your being die when you think you have lost them or they are hurt. It is such a complete, raw emotion that it is like a drug making you feel everything 100 times more."
• "Being in love means being a team. Putting the other person in front of you and being willing to do anything for them. Whenever you are thinking about things you always think of them first. I knew exactly when I fell in love because I always thought about what he would have thought before me and taking into consideration other his feelings before mine. It's when you feel altruistic and forget about what you want or need just to compromise for the other persons emotions instead."
• "It is very subjective, but for me love is definitely not a compromise... I agree love, or any relationship, is based on teamwork but in a team you don’t put someone before yourself, just as you would never put yourself before them. You stand side by side and support each other in every endeavour. Altruism isn’t reserved for love and love shouldn’t determine your character, I think it’s very important to be happy independent and to maintain that relationship with yourself regardless of relationship status... I guess the defining feature of love, in my perspective, is that it is healthy and mutual. Love is, to me, about a reciprocation of emotion because one of the loveliest things about being In love is knowing that someone loves you back, trusting in that and finding empowerment in it..."
• "It's a level of unconditional trust with someone. The kind of report where you can be in a room with the same person and that in itself makes you incandescently happy, even if you're both doing your own thing. I have found love often to be inexplicable, but it's a level of comfort and happiness that can't be matched."
• "Having the ability to overlook one another's flaws and respect each others differences, to feel comfortable in your own skin whilst wanting to be the best you can be with them, to hurt when they hurt and to feel indestructible whilst in each others presence."

Well. It would seem that "love, actually, is all around..."

Merry Christmas.

Love,

Belle x

The Ex Factor

I am a worshipper of StumbleUpon. I literally think it's the greatest invention man has ever conceived. (If you do not know what StumbleUpon is, leave this post and sign up immediately.) Recently, it threw up this website:

http://www.gabrielgadfly.com

Now, I am not a great lover of contemporary poetry. Most of it is too over-contrived and thought out for my liking, but StumbleUpon, being the best invention ever, dropped me on this poem...

I Did Not Keep Your Letters

I read them,

and then threw them in the trash,

but make no mistake, I read them.

I swallowed them whole,

I filled my eyes with every word,

I sewed them in patterns,

into the flesh of my body,

at night I wake to entertain the ghosts

lounging in my bedroom

with impromptu recitations

of your letters, of your thoughts,

of the shape of you in words

but I could not keep your letters.

I could not let them languish

in a dusty box, fermenting

into poisons in the closet dark.

I could not let them lie in wait,

like coiled paper vipers

ready to strike the hand that strays

too far and stirs the den.

...and it got me thinking - how do you deal with the debris (and I'm talking mostly metaphorical here, not the odd sock or used toothbrush) that's left behind when a relationship comes to an end?

I, perhaps unfortunately, have had quite a few relationships. Most were played out within a few years in my mid-teenage years - fraught, tumultuous, month-long love affairs that ended with indifference on either side - but a couple since then were meaningful, lasting, and beautiful. My first serious boyfriend wrote me letters; wonderful, heart-felt souvenirs that were a testament to the glorious naivety of teenage love. He played me the guitar, and we penned songs together. But it didn't work out, for many regrettable reasons; timing, university, my head-strong and resistant nature. Thankfully, with much hard work and emotion, we managed to become friends - although with so much history, it is hard to ever truly let go of the past. Recently, I found out another ex has a new girlfriend. We broke up around the beginning of the year - I am now also in a new, happy relationship - so why did the news of this strike like a thunderbolt into my heart? Now, before you palm me off as some vindictive psycho, let me just say this: I did not feel jealous. We all know, when a relationship ends, that the day is going to come when your ex-significant other finds someone new. This did not come as a surprise. Instead, the news blew in, and stirred up the forgotten dust that had collected in the corners of my heart - the debris that was left behind. So what did I do? I turned to StumbleUpon. That's right guys, it truly is the solution to any situation. And, like some kind of telepathic artificially-intelligent mastermind, it presented me with this beautiful piece of anonymous prose:

"Maybe your first love is the one that sticks with you because it's the only person who will ever receive all of you. After that, you learn better. But, most of all, no matter what, a piece of you forever remains left behind in the heart of the one you loved - a piece no future love could ever get, no matter what. That piece holds innocence, the belief that love really can last forever. It holds friendship and pain, trial and error, that one kiss you'll never forget, and that night under the stars you can never get back. It holds youth and everything you thought love would be, everything that was proven wrong."

To me, that pretty much sums it all up in a very neat nutshell. There will always be that slight pain when you hear the news of someone you held so dear, for so long, moving on - even if you can't stand them, or have nearly forgotten their name. Because there were moments when you took down all your barriers, and let them see you bare, and it still didn't guarantee that they'd stay. I think that will always hurt - whoever they were, and wherever you are now.

Do you agree?

Love,

Belle x