Beauty is pain.
By Piper Zschack 5/22
Being cradled in depression’s fist from a young age caused my spirit to grow into the gaps between its unyielding fingers. The shape that I take as I enter my adult life is a product of the ways that it stifled my evolution. We fit together like the weed in the concrete crack, inseparable. Synonymous.
Once the caress of depression slipped away from my skin, I didn’t know how to handle my peace. However terrible, being depressed had become a deep comfort. I’d nestled into the sadness that wouldn’t leave and made a home there. Aside from the Lexapro, the hardest pill to swallow has been the fact that pain doesn’t always have a purpose.
I am not better, stronger, or wiser for having been in emotional pain for so many years, an operose realization for a writer. The culture of creation and art making is so interwoven with suffering that to accept happiness is to give up a major source of inspiration. Trauma is material, and I’ve found that healing is infinitely difficult when I consider the fact that my writing will become less consumable the lighter it gets. The audience is insatiable with morbid curiosity.
So I become a container for pain without purpose. Where does that leave me? I’m no genius artist anymore. With a world so corrupt, it looks silly, foolish to experience joy and contentment. How can my art be meaningful if I don’t live and breathe agony? The tortured artist, the suicidal poet, the depressed painter are stereotypes that become a self fulfilling prophacy. The idea that the best art is made with blood eventually becomes a new knife instead of a bandage; art should be agony’s outlet, not its birthplace.
Beauty is pain?
Losing my depression was as much of a displacement as it was a release. I’m mourning an identity that hinged on suffering as its core component. As I settle into my peace, the value that resides in joy is springing forth for the first time. Joy breeds growth and the more intently I listen to the parts of me that reach out for happiness, the more I am guided to create. The dents in my soul are softening as I gravitate towards the softness that the world has to offer; I cannot fight with the sharp edges of injustice if I cannot negotiate peace and balance within myself. The voids that depression carved into me are mine to fill and I am not naive for desiring that they be patched over with eudaimonia.
Beauty is not pain. Beauty is recognizing that my art finds meaning in its ability to heal.
By Piper Zschack 5/22
Being cradled in depression’s fist from a young age caused my spirit to grow into the gaps between its unyielding fingers. The shape that I take as I enter my adult life is a product of the ways that it stifled my evolution. We fit together like the weed in the concrete crack, inseparable. Synonymous.
Once the caress of depression slipped away from my skin, I didn’t know how to handle my peace. However terrible, being depressed had become a deep comfort. I’d nestled into the sadness that wouldn’t leave and made a home there. Aside from the Lexapro, the hardest pill to swallow has been the fact that pain doesn’t always have a purpose.
I am not better, stronger, or wiser for having been in emotional pain for so many years, an operose realization for a writer. The culture of creation and art making is so interwoven with suffering that to accept happiness is to give up a major source of inspiration. Trauma is material, and I’ve found that healing is infinitely difficult when I consider the fact that my writing will become less consumable the lighter it gets. The audience is insatiable with morbid curiosity.
So I become a container for pain without purpose. Where does that leave me? I’m no genius artist anymore. With a world so corrupt, it looks silly, foolish to experience joy and contentment. How can my art be meaningful if I don’t live and breathe agony? The tortured artist, the suicidal poet, the depressed painter are stereotypes that become a self fulfilling prophacy. The idea that the best art is made with blood eventually becomes a new knife instead of a bandage; art should be agony’s outlet, not its birthplace.
Beauty is pain?
Losing my depression was as much of a displacement as it was a release. I’m mourning an identity that hinged on suffering as its core component. As I settle into my peace, the value that resides in joy is springing forth for the first time. Joy breeds growth and the more intently I listen to the parts of me that reach out for happiness, the more I am guided to create. The dents in my soul are softening as I gravitate towards the softness that the world has to offer; I cannot fight with the sharp edges of injustice if I cannot negotiate peace and balance within myself. The voids that depression carved into me are mine to fill and I am not naive for desiring that they be patched over with eudaimonia.
Beauty is not pain. Beauty is recognizing that my art finds meaning in its ability to heal.
