"The fact that there was no answer to the question he screamed, "Why do I suffer?"
Man, the bravest animal and most prone to suffer, does not deny suffering as such:
he wills it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it,
a purpose of suffering. The meaninglessness of suffering, not the suffering,
was the curse that lay over mankind so far."
Between the ages of 11 and 14, I was, like many preteens, riding an emotional dip in my life.
I was extremely insecure about my acne and weight, about being judged by the popular kids.
I wasn't allowed to sleepover at friends places, or have a phone, or go to the mall without an adult.
And my relationship with my parents was… rocky. It felt as though they never trusted me,
and that I would never be a good enough daughter. One of the ways I tried to disperse of my emotions and thoughts
was to write a diary entry every day. I did this for three years.
January 11th, 2015 "I don't know why but during French today,
this heavy weight feeling in my chest and stomach (I have it all the time) just got really bad.
When I breathed faster, it got heavier and I felt like I was going to break down so I went to the washroom…
I cried, I picked at my skin… I wish I could forget every mistake in my life. aka all of it."
March 10th, 2016 "Is there a purpose to all of this? I'm so helpless, so hopeless, so everything less.
My heart constantly aches for love, for joy, for meaning in life.
In the book I'm reading, Clockwork Prince, someone called Magnus Bane says that he once met an immortal who had lived for so long
that they felt no emotions anymore… except fear. And when Magnus asked him why he did not simply kill himself as life had no purpose for him anymore,
he said that death was still feared and unexplored; the only thing in his thousand years of life that he had no experience of.
I feel like that's me. I do not wish to take my life but logically speaking, why shouldn't I?"
I sound pitiful in these diary entires. I sound deeply in need of help,
but here's the kicker: I was a fraud. Yes, I was sad a lot. Yes, I had low self esteem.
But I wasn't suicidal. I never had a real panic attack in French class. It’s so embarrassing and disappointing to acknowledge that that’s how I once acted.
But being chronically on Tumblr in the early 2010s did something awful to me:
it made me desire intense depression. Mina Le has a video where she discusses how Tumblr,
which is kind of like the blog version of Twitter, made being sad an essential part of what made you interesting
and so it led to romanticizing mental illness. Mina and others have talked about this quite a bit,
so you can check out their content for a deep dive on Tumblr. But I really want to zoom in on this desire to be sad and to have trauma.
Tumblr allowed us to masochistically indulge in self-pain because we received attention, support, and #you’resorelatable comments
because of our pain. But what about the situations where we desire sadness for the sake of being sad?
W hen there is no outer audience to give us attention for our sadness?
When I was 9 years old, I used to lie in bed with my iPod nano and blast “Demons” by Imagine Dragons
as I daydreamed myself being pulled away from my loved ones, watching them thrash in agony.
Creating tragic daydreams in my head—starring myself— was one of my favourite past times.
No one knew I was conjuring up these imaginary scenarios and so no one was giving me attention for them.
So then why did I enjoy doing it? I also want to explore our love for sad art.
If “tragically beautiful” art aestheticizes suffering and mental illness,
then is it moral to create it? And why do we have tropes such as "the troubled artist"?