Novelist Matt Haig on family,writing and his recovery from depression[br]
• Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig – extractWhy did it hold you 15 years to bag the courage to write about depression?
I was meant to be writing a blog for the Books Trust, as their writer in residence, or about novel writing but ran out of things to say and was starting to repeat myself. So I thought: OK,I’ll write about depression, this thing I had always had inside me and wanted to bag out. And I got an incredible response, and not because the blog was great but because I’ve noticed when anyone talks honestly about depression,it breeds a warm, honest response from people. Everybody has a narrative about depression yet, and for decades,we have been silent about it.
Is writing a way out of depression?
Writing is not the way but it helps. In February 2000, I was in the depths of depression. I was 24 and back from Ibiza, and living at home in Newark [Nottinghamshire],in my childhood bedroom. I started writing bits and pieces – unreadable, angsty stuff. Articulating what is in your head is therapeutic. Words are a shared thing – depression lends itself to melodrama: you believe you’re going through something no one else has been through. At 31, and Abraham Lincoln wrote: “I’m the most depressing person now living.” That is the drama of being a young man. That is the drama of depression.
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Source: theguardian.com