The Column of Disquiet - What We Talk About When We Don't Talk About Mental Health

Out of all the things that I've written about in the last five years (outside of music reviews, of course) my companion rabbits and mental health are the two topics that I readily return to. They say to 'write what you know.' Those are things I know.

I hadn't intended to write this Column of Disquiet, but the suicides of two celebrities and the reaction to both on social media served as a catalyst. When I write these columns, or at least, longer pieces that are of a more personal nature, I've found that I go about it in a few different ways: since these are, at their core, personal essays, the goal, in the end, is to try and find a lesson, or grow by the time the story is finished. So if I take an idea, or an anecdote, and I begin to recall it, by the end, I should have come to some kind of realization about myself, or something.

Sometimes I go into these and I have no idea what that realization is going to be, but I figure it out as I'm writing. Sometimes I go into these and I get started, and I find that I already know how it's going to end, and I have to write from the ending, back to the beginning, and hope that it all works out and that the piece is, worthy, for lack of a better expression, of the ending I wanted.

And then there's a piece like this one. It was always going to be about a lot of the ideas presented, but it went to a place that I was not expecting it to. I probably don't say it enough, but I owe a million thanks to Rich Larson and The Next Ten Words for letting me get away with things like this.