Depression (Caturday)

Big Cat, Little Cat: Depression

Dealing with Depression… in Story

I was reading a really interesting book the other day. My friend had asked me to be a beta reader for her new novel, written from the perspective of two house-cats. The background characters are a woman who suffers from what appears to be severe depression, and a man. What struck me about this story is that it treats depression honestly. The woman has a depressive spell and… that’s it. She starts neglecting the things in her life. Including things she cares about.

We like to think that characters in fiction can just ‘power through’ their problems. To date, the (unintentionally) funniest scene in all of cinema is the one in Iron Man 2 where Tony creates a new stable element in his living room using what appear to be spare auto-parts. No cyclotron. No team of researchers. Just a guy with bit of pluck and luck working in his hobby shop of a Sunday afternoon. But even if we grant that physics and chemistry are no big deal, that doesn’t mean you can power through depression. Because what depression attacks first is your ability to fight depression. Starting with your ability to reach out and seek help.

But it spares the sense of humor, for some reason.

Depression and Sarcasm

The trope I lean most heavily on in this series is humor-as-coping-mechanism. I don’t know why it is, but we can still be funny while we’re depressed. Actually, some of my best comedic moments ascend, like King David’s penitential psalms, from the pit of despair.

Does leaning on that trope feed into the idea that people with mental/emotional issues are good to keep around because we’re amusing? Fuck. I guess it does. I never really thought about it. But what to do? The humor comes from a pure place. And what’s more, in those darkest moments, I need it. So I’m not going to turn it off for fear of it being misunderstood, or misinterpreted, or taken the wrong way.

And that means I’m not going to stop using it as part of my craft. So. You’re stuck with my puns. God help you.

Description

Four identical panels, two atop and two below. In each, two cats sit side by side on a cushion. On the left sits a large orange with darker orange stripes. On the right, a small grey with darker grey stripes. The orange looks down at the grey as if graciously appreciating a comment that was meant to be funny but didn’t quite land. The little grey looks out of the frame as if at a tax form he does not particularly want to pick up and get started working on.

Panel 1

Big Cat: What’s going on, Little Cat?
Little Cat: Oh. Just feeling really depressed today.

Panel 2

Big Cat: You should just get over it.
Little Cat: …

Panel 3

Big Cat: Don’t you take medicine to make it all better?
Little Cat: You’re trying to get me to power through out of spite.

Panel 4

Little Cat: Oh shit–it’s working! Thank you!