My music is (figuratively) killing me: mental health in the arts

The view from the kitchen

I have a confession to make. 
It's 7am, and I've been awake for 2 hours already. I've sat staring at Twitter and Facebook, mindlessly refreshing the page as the world grows pink around me and begins to wake up. I can hear the teachers start to arrive at the school behind my apartment, and the rush of cars on the road nearby. It's an odd feeling, the stillness and loneliness of the early morning - I'm the only one home, and the quiet is terrifying. 

I can't hide from depression and anxiety in the silence. It's a smothering emptiness that threatens to swallow me whole. In the daylight hours, I keep my mind occupied with work and with projects. I never stop. Get up, go to work, come home, work on something else. It's the curse of a musician living in the 21st century. With crushing budget cuts, there's not many of us who have full time music jobs - but for me, it's something else. I've never been able to just be still. I am a master of avoidance, taking on as many projects as I can, trying to avoid the desperate reality that I've never felt like Enough. 

Reaching, reaching, reaching. Always reaching for something else to cover the terror that I'm not "talented," or "special," or "gifted." It's a bad case of Impostor Syndrome, to be sure (depressingly common within the arts), but it's also this ingrained belief that nothing I've ever achieved is worthwhile, and it won't ever be. I drag myself through the days, and with every passing hour I feel less able to Get On With It. 

View from the other window

I used to be a musician, full stop. I engaged in multiple ensembles, I composed my face off, and I voraciously listened to new music on a weekly basis. Looking back, that person seems almost alien to me now. I pulled back from performing in ensembles and I haven't performed solo since university. I've barely written anything this year other than a couple of arrangement commissions, and I'm too terrified to put music on YouTube, because what if it's not good? 

I'm depressed and anxious because I feel like music is slipping away. I'm getting older, but not wiser or more accomplished. I can't throw myself into music, because I have anxiety and depression, which saps my energy and destroys my creative spirit. It's a wicked, monstrous cycle that so many of us fall into, and I'm sick of it. 

I read a blog recently (and lord help me, I cannot find it now to link to it) (I really wanted to link to it and spent 20 minutes Googling different terms, and I finally found it). It talked about how "radical self reliance" is literally killing people - people who live on the edge of depression and don't have enough of a support system that's constant and enduring. The meritocracy myth is devastatingly toxic and convinces the Have-Nots that their lack of success is some kind of moral failing. 

"I didn't try hard enough." 

"I should have worked harder." 

"I'll just never be good enough."

So many of us struggle. So many of us feel pain in the darkness and the silence of the wee hours. So many of us walk through life laden with doubt of our abilities and guilt about our supposed failures. I don't want any of us to fall through the cracks, to give up (on music or otherwise), to fade out. Many of you, I have never met. Many of you, I never will. But that doesn't mean I don't care. The article linked above talks about being brutally honest about struggles with mental illness to remove the social stigma that has plagued us for generations. Even though it's scary to talk about, I'm making the change. 

Will you join me?