on depression and hurt/comfort
here’s the thing about being depressed in real life: it’s lonely and isolating and scary and numbing and there are times when you so badly want someone, anyone to notice, but you can’t bring yourself to tell them what the problem is because then they’ll know, and sometimes there’s other terrible shit you’re dealing with in tandem and sometimes it’s just the depression, but either way, it can easily reach a point where you start wishing something visibly awful would happen to you just so you’d have a reasonable excuse to be feeling as though it already had, like it would somehow be easier to wake up wanting to die if you could blame it on something other than just your brain, if there was a cause, even though you rationally know it doesn’t work like that, that it would only make things worse; and it’s messy and hard and it goes on forever and there’s no simple catharsis, you’re often surrounded by people who don’t understand or whose issues don’t play nicely with yours even though you’re both trying, and you can’t see a reasonable end in sight and you just want to believe that it’s going to get better -
and here’s the thing about hurt/comfort in fanfiction: it takes all that fear and pain and loneliness you’re feeling IRL and channels it into characters you care about, characters who always pull through against all odds, characters whose stories you can control, characters whose lovers or friends or parents can tell them the things you wish that someone had said to you, and you know from the outset that even when they’re bloody and crying, it’s going to get better for them, that they’re going to be good to each other and fix each other and listen and understand, because that’s what those stories are for, it’s what they do, and whether you’re the one writing them or reading them, they speak to that place in you that hurts, they show you it can get better, they tell you it’s not your fault, they let you feel all the grief in your life in a way that’s safe, cathartic, hopeful, because the story brings you through the darkness and out the other side -
because ultimately, hurt/comfort isn’t just about the characters. it’s about us being hurt and needing comfort, too.
