the desire to be sad: "tragically beautiful" art & romanticizing mental illness

the most common thing people say to others with mental illness is "it's okay not to be okay", but god so many people need to hear that it's OKAY to be OKAY.

this reminds me of the situation with mitski, who is known for her sad girl persona (can probably tell just by her teenage fans). her new album has been heavily critiqued b/c it being different from her typical sound. she specifically mentioned that she wanted to end off the album with this one song that's our lamp on a happier note. it reminds people that shes also a person who is healing but her fans want her to stay the same struggling, sad girl she was years ago. its like just because they discovered her recently means they can dictate her music career + make her rely on a persona from YEARS ago.

I've always found it kinda weird when people say that their trauma is what makes them "funny"...like it just pushes the idea that people who aren't mentally ill are boring or not funny which is why for a long time I felt like I had to have some kind of traumatic back story to be interesting. I'm not trying to blame these people but I just wish mental illness wasn't so romanticized like it is

suffering has a weird way of convincing us that it's more real than any other emotion. incredible video olivia!

"There is nothing wrong with a simple life of peace and prosperity" -Uncle Iroh

I used to hate when people said that “trauma adds spice” and “trauma creates character”, because, as someone who went through very traumatic experiences during my childhood and preteen years, I wondered why anyone would want to be imprisoned by their own mind and not be able to do anything about it. Then I realized, I might not say it out loud, but I unconsciouly think this way too. I remember when girls at my school with “perfect” lives and “perfect” parents and “perfect” houses approached me, I had no interest in becoming friends with them, because I thought their little bubble of privilege wouldn’t allow them to understand “real life”, that money and college and clothes was all they could ever want, that they couldn’t have meaningful conversations because “they were boring”. Read that again. I unconsciously thought having a privileged, happy life made you boring. Even in relationships, I always felt attracted to people that needed “fixing”, as if their trauma made them more interesting to be around, and “spiced up” our dynamic. I think that people don’t want to be sad, they just want to feel like they have a distinct personality with traits of their own. People like to be unique, and they like to feel as if they were in a movie and they like to be able to cry to sad songs just to validate their own feelings. There’s a voyeuristic aspect as to why girls like crying with mascara on and reading Sylvia Plath, as if someone was actually watching them and they were a character in Skins. There’s a reason why people look for love “like in the movies”. There’s a reason why the most famous artists and musicians and writers all happened to do drugs or be depressed or live sad lives, and usually had very unfortunate deaths that we now romanticize. We’ve commodified feelings like sadness and love so much that we now think the only way of having an interesting personality and a life worth telling is by being depressed. And of course, anyone who went through a mood disorder knows it’s not like in the movies at all, and it doesn’t spice up your personality. It ruins your life.

My Buddhist Lama told me "sometimes we become so attached to the battle of the illness that we don't want to heal anymore because that battle gives us meaning" and this hit me, still processing it.

Why didn't I get the "sad cute girl crying, listening to sad music under the rain and making deep beautiful meaningful art" type of depression and got the "can't eat, shower, losing all my social circle, ruining my talents, hobbies and my entire fcking life" type of depression instead?

Man, it takes real bravery to put the cringe of your youth front and center on the internet. Props for that.

I'd like to add, glorification only happens to "mainstream" mental illness e.g. depression, anxiety, ADHD etc. Meanwhile illnesses such as schizophrenia or personality disorders are villainised. The glorification of "mainstream" mental illness results in a large group of people judging people for actually being depressed, "you're TOO depressed, you're TOO negative, you're TOO angry, you're TOO much, TOO hard to hang around with", because the reality does not match the persona. Glorification hurts, it is the exact opposite of representation.

One of my favourite quotes, which feels relevant: “Art should disturb the comfortable, and comfort the disturbed”

Artists are not responsible for people fetishizing their art. I can't stress that enough.

As a preteen i wanted so desperetaly to be depressed, sad and miserable because of tumblr. It was so easy to make myself cry while listening to a song i didn't really relate to, just for the aesthetics of it... Then when i was 13 two of the most important people in my life died and my best friend committed S, then my schizoid personality disorder started to hit alongside visual and auditory hallucinations and suddenly i was actually miserable. i still remember how disappointed i was when i realized being miserable wasn't poetic, or beautiful, or meaningful, how it was just... bad. just bad.

After suffering with depression for about 5 years, I gotta say, it's a phenomenal feeling to wake up and feel all right, and doing good. Feeling joy, happines from small things etc. Being happy is what we all deserve

I've also heard that the human brain is biologically hardwired to remember struggles and negative things to stay safe and survive, so sad things are just more memorable. I think that's part of why we hold onto them more than happy and neutral ones

I remember when I had a really bad day or got into argument, I would get the urge to write it on paper just to make sense of what I was feeling. But when writing, I would catch myself change details to make it more depressing, to justify my anger/sadness. Then I would stop, throw away the paper and try to write again but was ashamed of the reality which was that I got angry/sad for a simple, normal reason. I now understand the confusion I felt before. I guess I wanted my sadness to be cool, aestethic and when I would realize it wasn't I would get frustrated.

I have been depressed since i was 14. I am 22 now. And let me tell you, depression is a soul eating void you dont want to get yourself into. It's more than the shallow, superficial pop culture potrayal of a "hot mess". Depression is the gut wreching feeling of never reaching your potential because every day is a heavy rock upon your chest that you lie squished under like an insect; it is the withdrawal from reality into a personalised hell you carry with yourself everywhere; it is total helplessness that engulfs your existence. Everywhere you go, it goes with you. Do not romanticise this hell.

the word "depression" is definitely overused, and thrown around WAY too easily. people need to stop aestheticizing these serious mental illnesses that people ACTUALLY suffer from

tiktok has become a tumblr.. thank you for this video. you have expressed so well everything that has been on my mind for a long time

from my pov, it seems that people "like" being sad means you've *thought* about life on a deeper level and have convinced yourself that you are able to see something others can't (even though this is just our ego talking), whereas being optimistic means you're blind and ignorant to rEaL LifE. idk, just some thoughts as i devour some penne pasta at 1:17pm