Mxogyny would like to thank Peter and Mollie for sharing their personal experiences with us and our readers; we appreciate how difficult this can be for some. If you or someone you know is suffering, please guide them to one of the many brilliant mental health helplines which can be found here for readers in England, and here (we love ‘Breathing Space’ in particular) for readers in Scotland.

Whether it be anxiety, elation, grief or heartbreak, the experiences of one’s mental health are the primary driving force of much of the art and media that we consume, from the paintings to poetry, to Netflix and photography on Instagram. Shakespeare’s sonnets cover everything from joy to obsessive-compulsive thoughts, and you don’t need to be an art historian to know that Edvard Munch was experiencing depression while painting ‘The Scream’. This has always been the case, and in the twenty-first century we are lucky enough to have a much wider scope to discuss the nature of these mental experiences than ever before.  

In honour of Mental Health Awareness Week, we have got in touch with some artists to discuss how mental health has affected their work. From Peter Wright we have a piece of prose, The Room, exploring the feelings associated with depression, and from Mollie Semple, we have a fascinating essay on how mental health has inspired some of her most successful work. The truth is that pieces of work about adversities in mental health, while often heart-breaking, do not have to be a ‘sad’ or ‘depressing’ experience. The existence of these works is a release for these artists, and we hope that their stories can inspire you to turn to art yourself when things may be getting tough.  

The Room – Peter Wright 

Peter Wright is a writer, content and website designer. His creative fiction work can be found at fortheedge.co.uk and content design work at clockwatcherstudios.com  

I remember writing The Room all in one go. I was waiting for my business partner in a coffee shop, in the middle of one of the many episodes of depression and anxiety I've had pretty much throughout my adult life (I'm 36 now!).  

I was looking for a short story to write on my blog, anyway, and I just began writing. 

It did not matter if it made sense, I just needed to get down how I felt. ‘The Room’ represents that feeling of urgency, and of feeling stuck and trapped in my own head. I can imagine or refocus as much as I like, but when I'm there, it doesn't feel like I'm in control. But the process of being creative, of writing, gives me a window to look out of. It is the only way I truly escape and feel as if I'm doing the one thing, that above all, I should be doing. Often, it's the best way to write, without thinking too much (that comes later with editing). 

Focussing on mental health has given me a unique perspective, one I use in abundance whilst writing. I hate it when it happens, but appreciate it's made me who I am today. 

 

I’m trapped in a room. 

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I can control almost everything in here. The walls. The view. The colour. I can make it however I want. 

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I can be alone. I can surround myself with crowds. Strangers. Friends. Both. 

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I control it all. 

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Except… 

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There’s a feeling; a weight in my stomach. 

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It anchors me. 

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Stops me from moving or even turning away. 

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It pulls from inside. 

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And without warning my thoughts turn to all the things that have gone wrong. All the things that could go wrong. All of my embarrassments and shame. 

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And anything good about me is now trivial. It doesn’t matter. 

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To me. To anyone. 

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And I’m scared. 

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I try to focus on controlling the room. I change its layout. Add windows. Add light. 

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I try and fill it with the things I think make me happy. Make me feel together. 

 But almost instantly the room fills with mirrors and all I see is me. 

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I close my eyes for a second, but I know as soon as I look, it’ll just be me, staring back. 

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All things fade. And I’m alone. 

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The room is now in darkness. 

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Empty. 

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This is it at its worst. 

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But I try. And I think. I visualise something. An escape. 

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A desk. 

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It has a laptop, or a canvas, or an instrument. 

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I sit down. And I write. I paint. I play. 

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One thing at a time. 

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Whatever comes to me. 

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It doesn’t need to make sense. 

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Structure will come. Flow will come. 

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It just needs to be enough to take me out of myself. 

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Out of the room. 

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Away from my head. 

 

Mental Health and Writing - Mollie Semple 

Mollie graduated with a degree in English Literature last summer and has since been pursuing a career as an actor and writer. She has written and performed in several plays including her one-woman show ‘Loneliness and Other Adventures’, and has written for her personal blog ‘The Fully Intended’ for eight years. Above all, she values the human connectivity that comes from writing and performing and the positive effect this can have on your mental well-being.  

In 2018 I wrote a play about loneliness. Loneliness was something that had plagued me for a couple of years, making me anxious, full of self-loathing, and deeply fearful of the future. I was in my second year of university and, at the start of that year, I had told myself I would not write a play to take to the Edinburgh Festival fringe because I didn’t have any ideas. I have plenty of time, I told myself, I’ll just put it off until another year. Then, late into the second term, I got rejected by yet another man from a relationship I thought was about to bloom. I was coming off Citalopram, I was extremely stressed from a million and one things going on, and then I was heart-broken; that deep-seated fear of loneliness was creeping back in.  

It was at this point that I made the decision to write a play about this fear. I was going to write, direct and perform it directly out of my own experiences. I told myself that by the time I had performed the play at the Edinburgh fringe I would be feeling mentally healthy again. I signed myself up for some university counselling sessions, put myself back on a course of anti-depressants, and threw myself into university work, writing and creating this play. I was not going to dwell on this person and get nothing out of it; I was going to direct my sadness and my fear into creative expression.  

The play went so well that I re-wrote it the next year to perform it as a one-woman show at a London Fringe Theatre. I was able to look back on all those fearful, sad, angry things that I wrote and see how far I had come. I felt like a different person. I have to say, acting a version of yourself that you no longer recognise is a bizarre, yet cathartic, experience.  

Using writing as a coping mechanism through periods of poor mental health was not new to me. I have written a personal blog since the age of fourteen, which started as a means to express well-meaning, if slightly naïve, political opinions as a young teenager. As I grew up it became the medium through which I expressed my experience of simply being on this planet. This meant that when I felt extremely low in my final year of school, I was able to express these feelings openly, understand them by externalising the thoughts, and receive support and admiration from anyone who was reading. I sometimes refer to my blog now as a public journal. I find it easier to write there when I am working through my thoughts and feelings because I have to really think about what I am saying to an audience and, thus, deconstruct my own thought process. It is an incredibly useful way of understanding what you are going through.  

However, above all, the best thing about sharing writing is that you are constantly reminded that you are not alone.  

When I performed my play in Edinburgh, I was surprised by the amount of older men who came up to me after almost every single show to say how much they related to the play and how grateful they were that I had written it. At the time of writing, I thought that my target audience was young women like me, and I had not paid much attention to the fact that loneliness is a universal experience that I was tapping into. I found that sharing my vulnerability was both empowering and enabled me to reach out and connect with so many people spanning all ages and identities. I found that in writing openly about my fears I had in fact discovered the complete opposite of loneliness.  

About four weeks ago I was dumped again. This time from a long-term relationship filled with love and memories that are hard to get over. I find myself facing loneliness again, feeling that fear creep up in me, those self-loathing thoughts resurfacing. As a result, I have written more blog posts in the last few weeks than I have in the whole of 2020. Each post, both in the process of writing and sharing it, has given me strength. I might spend all day dragging myself through emotional tar and suddenly have an idea for a post and, as soon as I press ‘publish’, I feel an enormous sense of relief. The blog, and the act of writing, allows me to face right up to my emotions and deconstruct them into something beautiful, but powerless.  

As soon as I published the first blog post after the break-up, I received a message from a girl I used to know at school. She was writing to say thank you because she was also going through a difficult breakup and my post had made her feel stronger and less alone. And that is the wonderful magic of writing, that no matter how lonely you might feel, no matter how scared or sad, depressed or anxious, you are never, ever alone.