I sat in my tutor’s office and he asked me how the writing was going.
“It’s going badly,” I said. “I used to think I was an introvert because I was a writer. I thought you had to be an introvert to be a writer. Now I’ve realised I don’t want to sit by myself for hours writing, I want to go to dinner parties.”
He agreed that going to dinner parties was preferable. Parties are pleasurable because of the following: people laugh at your jokes, compliment your dress and pay you attention. Writing is extremely boring because once you’ve written a joke it has to sit on your computer for 18 months until finally an editor looks it over and highlights it and when you hover over the highlighted joke, the note is just “?????”. They don’t get it, you think, and you reject the note. Then you go to a dinner party. Everyone finds you hilarious.
I'm obsessed with being hilarious because I have had depression for a very long time and I have lots of really quite unfunny moments such as slapping my own face until my ears ring
The reason I’m obsessed with being hilarious is because I have had depression for a very long time and I have experienced lots of really quite unfunny moments such as slapping my own face until my ears ring and lying on the kitchen floor wondering whether I could just will myself to die. When you are living like this it is hard to socialise. People don’t find you hilarious at all, and they don’t compliment your dress because you slept in your dress and your dress has mustard and dog hair all over it. So you don’t socialise. You start to think that you don’t want to socialise. But if you are not an introvert, if you are indeed just an extrovert who has depression, then you are actively harming yourself by not being around other people. This is a very hard cycle to break.
I’m addicted to socialising, which makes it hard to write. My book wasn’t writing itself. I decided I needed some alone time. I booked myself flights and went to stay in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere on the Latvian coast. “This will be fine,” I thought to myself. “I’m not depressed right now and I will go somewhere beautiful and work on My Project and it will be fine.”
It was fine, in the end. The days went quickly because there was a lot of beautiful beach to walk and paths through the forest to follow. I ate frugally and wandered. At one point I found myself completely lost. My landlady had given me an old white road bike with a basket to ride along the flat roads towards the sea and to the shops and back. I took it on a “short cut” through the forest, on a sand and dirt path that quickly disappeared into nothingness. I carried the bike on my shoulders through the forest. “This will be over soon,” I thought. “I will simply walk in one direction for a short amount of time and find myself back on a road.” I was mistakenly thinking of the forests one finds in the Lake District, rather than the Actual Wilderness. I was unprepared for how long I would have to walk. I was very hot and thirsty and actually beginning to go a little mad. “This is ridiculous,” I heard myself say, out loud, while contemplating having to sleep in the forest and maybe being eaten by bears. My ankles were bloodied and I had grease from the bike chain smeared all over my neck. My phone fell out of my pocket and I never saw it again. “Oh good,” I thought. “More solitude. Good. This is extremely helpful.”
The nights were unending. As soon as the sky went dark I had nothing. This is how it feels to be an extrovert who isn’t being paid any attention. I could have howled. Instead I smoked cigarettes and slapped away mosquitos and forced myself to write. It came, slowly at first, but occasionally in beautiful bursts of gunfire. Without my phone I didn’t even have any music. I listened for the wind and the insects battering at my windows with my breath held, as if I were expecting guests.
Without other people to fill in the blanks of one’s life, everything becomes heightened. The world is very exciting if you are not just staring into someone’s face, willing them to respond correctly to the things that you say. The trees and the birds and the waves – not one of them gives a shit about you. It’s very liberating. Have you ever felt snubbed by a cat on the street? That cat is the world at large, reminding you that you are unremarkable, that the universe exists no matter who you insult at the wedding, that you are free to walk out of a party in a terrible mood and having spoken to nobody and that the party might be a roaring success anyway! A disgusting, horrible, almost unbearable, but nonetheless completely necessary realisation. I kept realising it. I looked up into the night sky and was silent. I wrote, kept writing, because my urge to communicate drives me forward from moment to moment, especially when alone.
It is of the greatest importance to me now to create a solitary space and to inhabit it completely. To not be frightened of the moment when the bottle is empty, and people are gathering their coats. I recently moved away from London, something I do occasionally in order to reset myself, and every day is a new challenge. To consider something beautiful and to keep that beauty for myself, to know that it exists for me and that I deserve the solitary privilege of being in front of it. One morning, in Latvia, I came across the most perfect black snake. It was eating a toad very slowly. I shouted with joy to see it, and abandoned my bike by the side of the road. I had nobody to tell about the snake that day, but now I am telling you.
Eli Goldstone is the author of Strange Heart Beating, published by Granta Books
