I keep seeing an inability to function posited on this site as the
absolute nadir, the holy grail of depression, as if mental health
problems are only real if you are in bed, refusing to shower and
forgetting to eat.
I think this means that those of us who are
‘functional’ are often seen as suffering less, or that we have not truly
hit rock bottom. A large part of this may be that a sizeable portion of the
Tumblr demographic is quite young and composed of people who have not
yet had to fend for themselves.
The fact is, for many of us,
the terrifying threat of poverty simply has to come first before
getting better in any way or allowing ourselves to address issues. I
have wished in the past so much that I could just stay in bed for two
weeks and sort out my head, cry, have a meltdown, and perhaps go some
time without showering.
I’m not depressed now, but my
generalised anxiety makes working an ordeal every single day (lmao my
brain doesn’t rest from work anxiety over the weekend, I’m afraid).
But
there are bills to pay, and some of us have kids to feed, pets to look
after, and no sick pay or vacation days at our disposal. So even if you
have lain awake all night in existential dread, even if you have to
stick your headphones in and turn your music up every morning because
you can feel a panic attack coming on when you are on the train to work
or college, and when one small bit of criticism from your boss means
that you cry in the bathroom and have learnt how to splash water on your
face to stop the telltale signs of your misery manifesting themselves
in the office, you go on. You have no choice, none whatsoever.
So
my point is this – even falling, even being depressed, is mired in
classism to the point that not functioning is some kind of weird
privilege. And don’t get me wrong – if you can’t function, it’s hardly something great. It’s terrible and crushing and damaging. Even those of us who are
‘functional’ can’t go on and almost always end up having some sort of
meltdown. But please don’t think that it’s any easier for the functional
ones – it’s often exactly the opposite. It’s torture because it’s relentless. Bills and responsibilities don’t give a shit about your mental health, so if you have a good support network and your finances don’t rely on you turning up to your job every single working day, be grateful for that.
I could write such a fucking essay about this but you are SO right that it is about classism and privilege and I used to get so sick of people telling me I didn’t have it that bad if I could still function. (I say used to because BUH-BYE I don’t tolerate that shit in my life anymore LOL.)
There’s such a long term effect from this, too, it mangles you so bad. When I was in college, there were so many days that the only reason I scraped the energy together to go to class was because my anxiety about disappointing my professors or having to deal with flunking out was WORSE than the anxiety of whatever was making me want to stay home, and it was a conscious effort on my part to always try to focus on the thing that felt worse and use it as motivation. Same goes with going to work, even when I’m anxious or depressed, because the anxiety over being homeless is WORSE.
And it’s… not healthy? To pit anxieties and triggers against each other like that? And go with the easier path? It just means you’re constantly anxious without actually coping with anything lmfao.
I mean I know the economy is in the toilet and so many people are still relying on their parents for longer than we were intended to, as well as the complication that Tumblr’s conversations are often driven by the impulse to woobify mental illness, but this is so fuckin real yall.
I I used to get so sick of people telling me I didn’t have it that bad if I could still function. (I say used to because BUH-BYE I don’t tolerate that shit in my life anymore LOL.)
Oh man I’m jealous. I don’t have a choice of cutting it out of my life, because it’s my mother who says that to me about myself (and about friends who have been hospitalised!! HOW SICK DO YOU HAVE TO BE BEFORE IT’S REAL AUGH) – “You aren’t trying to stab members of your family, or ranting incoherently on the street to strangers. That’s mental illness. You don’t have that.”
It’s immensely upsetting and frustrating. Trying to have a life when you’re crazy is so hard but the more invisible you make your sickness in order to survive the less real anyone will acknowledge it is. Covering a bullet wound with a bandaid doesn’t make the bullet wound magically not exist anymore!
undiagnosed type II bipolar (is that grammatically correct? Or would you write “Yes, it’s quite possible that Lestat is undiagnosed as having type II bipolar personality disorder”?). You might want to ask some Lestat RPers for their thoughts on this, too.
I don’t know enough about diagnosing bipolar to say for sure what I think, in the past I’ve written that I didn’t think Lestat was bipolar specifically, but that he might have PTSD. Now, I feel like I don’t know enough about either of those to make a definitive statement. I don’t think AR has ever addressed it in any interviews, on FB, or at a booksigning. Anyone is welcome to reblog/comment on this post.
Anon: “I’ve noticed the same patterns in him that I see in myself, and it makes it hard to read the books recently because he is so chaotic in such an eerily familiar way that it unsettles me.”
I’m sorry that this makes it hard for you to read the books recently, Anon. Does anyone else out there have bipolar, or specifically type II bipolar, and have advice for Anon about this?
The reason I love Only Lovers Left Alive is it shows that a character (Adam) can be severely mentally ill, in this case depressed and suicidal, and still be seen as lovable and capable of being loved and loving in return without being “cured” of their mental illness, and that a mentally ill character can have other attributes aside from being mentally ill while still showing the impact being mentally ill has on his personality.
Adam from OLLA is an extremely important character to me you guys.
*nods* well, I feel ya, but it is at least addressed in canon. So much more Daniel and Armand is always needed and wanted, tho! That’s what fanfic is for ;D
@monstersinthecosmos has some good Daniel/Armand stuff on AO3 you should definitely check out.
Essays could be – and probably have been – written on the topic of Daniel’s sanity, and on his relationship with Armand before and after he’s turned. Whether it’s real insanity or a “spell” as Marius calls it in B&G, Daniel and Armand are not compatible for a period of time in canon.
TL;DR: Daniel and Armand’s fallout is at least addressed in canon. It seems to me that Daniel left Armand of his own free will, and Marius took him in at some point. It doesn’t seem to be a secret from anyone involved.
Hit the jump for more, cut for length.
“Also, I got a bit upset that Marius had Daniel but didn’t tell Armand until much later on the books.”
Well, that’s our unreliable narrator/retconning that AR does. Daniel is turned in QOTD and we see some of his fledgling struggling. I don’t think Daniel’s in TOBT at all, bc that’s a mostly Lestat book, as is MTD, so it’s TVA when we find out from Armand what’s happened between him and Daniel. Then we get a glimpse of Daniel living with Marius in B&G. So Marius couldn’t tell Armand about it sooner than that.
So no, they don’t get a whole book in canon, but we do see where Daniel went and we get some explanation about it.
It seems to me that Daniel left Armand of his own free will and at some point, Marius took Daniel in. Armand says in TVA:
With Benji and Sybelle I rejoined the world in a way which I had not done since my
fledgling, my one and only fledgling, Daniel Molloy, had left me.
Marius tells Thorne in B&G:
“… I took Daniel with me because he needed me. I took Daniel because it’s unendurable
to me to be utterly alone…”
And then in PL, there is a closer relationship implied between Daniel and Marius, possibly a legit canon ship.
I don’t know how much Marius was trying to protect Armand or anyone else from Daniel’s insanity. I wouldn’t necessarily label it “insanity” either, but that he was going through a difficult time. Everyone has their own headcanons about it.
Armand in TVA, he doesn’t say Daniel is insane, just that he and Daniel are out of tune:
Daniel, though alive and wandering, though civil and gentle, can no more stand my
company than I can stand his.
…
I was no Marius to him afterwards. It was too exactly as I supposed: he loathed me in
his heart for having initiated him into Living Death, for having made him in one night
both an immortal and a regular killer.
…
There was never any innocence for us, there was never any springtime. There was
never any chance, no matter how beautiful the twilight gardens in which we
wandered. Our souls were out of tune, our desires crossed and our resentments too
common and too well watered for the final flowering.
Marius explains it to Thorne in B&G, it seems more like being “under a spell,” not a loss of sanity:
“Have you ever seen one of our kind under such a spell?” Marius asked.
Thorne shook his head, No, he had not. But he understood how such a thing could
happen.
“It occurs sometimes,” said Marius. “The blood drinker becomes enthralled. I remember
centuries ago I heard the story of a blood drinker in a Southern land whose sole passion
was for finding beautiful shells along the shore, and this she did all night long until near
morning.
She did hunt and she did drink, but it was only to return to the shells, and once she looked
at each, she threw it aside and went on searching. No one could distract her from it.
Daniel is enthralled in the same way. He makes these small cities.
He doesn’t want to do anything else. It’s as if the small cities have caught him. You might
say I look after him.“
Thorne was speechless, out of respect. He couldn’t tell whether Marius’s words affected
the blood drinker who continued to work upon his world. Thorne felt a moment of
confusion.
Then a low genial laugh came from the youngish blood drinker. “Daniel will be this way
for a while,” said Marius, “and then his old faculties will come back to him.”
^Marius seems to be saying this is some kind of temporary spell, he doesn’t seem to be doing much in terms of mental health care for Daniel other than being supportive and taking physical care of him.
Ah, okay. Nicolas had a rough time in canon, sadly ;A;
[^X Nicolas by @unionthesalmon – plz reblog from X or the source]
“Armand was a little bitch just because of the whole Nicki thing.” – Armand may have been trying to help Nicki in the ways he knew how. Armand had been a coven master for hundreds of years, dealt with madness from many ages of vampires, maybe this was something that helped in other cases. It could be seen as cruel from our mortal standards, but maybe that was considered a reasonable form of treatment for vampires.
We only have the account of Nicolas and Armand’s interactions in Eleni’s letters and very little is said. No one ever brings it up again (unless they do in PLROA, which I still haven’t finished), and since we only have the one account, I can’t jump to the conclusion that Armand was definitely torturing Nicki. He can be cruel, but Lestat asked him to take good care of Nicki, and I feel like Armand tried to do the right thing.
“And I agree with you that Nicki was mentally ill” – Some ppl headcanon that he was, and I don’t know what I think about that, but again, maybe Armand was trying to treat the illness and save Nicki!
“And I freaking loved Nicki, I cried when he died. If Armand hadn’t have done that, would Nicki had lived on? Maybe not, but still.” – If we go by my theory that Armand was trying to help him, maybe Armand’s treatment prolonged Nicki’s life. We just don’t know.
If Armand was really torturing Nicki, I think we would have found out more about it in TVA, or some other book, or Lestat would have confronted Armand about it.
But whether Armand really antagonized Nicolas to his death or not, Nicolas had enough reason on his own to end badly even before Armand got involved… as Nicolas tells Lestat, it was his intention all along to fail:
“All a misunderstanding, my love, ” he said. Acid on the tongue.
The blood sweat had broken out again, and his eyes glistened as if they
were wet. “It was to hurt others, don’t you see, the violin playing, to
anger them, to secure for me an island where they could not rule. They would watch my ruin, unable to do anything about it.” I didn’t
answer. I wanted him to go on.
“And when we decided to go to Paris, I thought we would starve in
Paris, that we would go down and down and down. It was what I
wanted, rather than what they wanted, that I, the favored son, should
rise for them. I thought we would go down! We were supposed to go
down.”
Perhaps becoming a vampire was not the cure for that intention/feeling/illness, and it just magnified the self-destruction he already felt ;A;
Awww, @wicked-felina and I are happy to have done that to you! Thank you for the compliments ❤ yes, Nicki/Lestat were SO cute and lovely (Anon refers to the Poor and the Dead)
(Armand wasn’t in that fic, so I’m not sure in what context you’re referring to him. I did have him being quite a little bitch in my other recent fic that I did w/ @vampchronfic, Hunting in a Walmart, and yes, I think his beauty helps him get away w/ a lot of questionable behavior!)
Idk what would have happened if Nicki hadn’t “gone insane,” but also if Lestat hadn’t been kidnapped that night ;A; Nicki always seemed to have that darkness in him. Would Lestat have been medication enough to keep Nicki… I hesitate to use the word “sane” here, or “happy,” but would Lestat have been enough to make life seem worth living for Nicki?
There is some fanon that Nicki suffered from mental illness, and idk if Lestat was really equipped to handle the role of being a support and caregiver to someone who might have needed alot more than that *cries forever for Nicki*
Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.
Do you have a message for people who suffer with bipolar disorder?
Oh, yes. You can outlast anything. It’s complicated, it’s a job, but it’s doable. One of the greatest things that happened for me was that psychotic episode. Having survived it, I now know the difference between a problem and an inconvenience. Bipolar disorder can be a great teacher. It’s a challenge, but it can set you up to be able to do almost anything else in your life. – Carrie Fisher [x]
[^X Lestat de Valois and Nicolas de Lenfent by @kumiho5]
I think some ppl love Nicolas specifically bc, while he is mentioned, he doesn’t exist in later canon, he’s not as thoroughly explored, there’s more room for the reader to have our own interpretation of him.
As a side note: I really didn’t realize there was so much love for Nicolas until I got on tumblr! I think he represents this generation’s disillusionment with society at large better than Lestat does, Nicolas’ rebellion is a modern-era grunge rebellion, bc he HAS TALENT, and is angry with the way it’s recognized, angry with so much about the way the world runs on autopilot, angry with societal ideals of success. He probably does have some mental issues, too, and I think this generation is more comfortable “coming out” with BPD, or manic-depression, etc. than in 18th century France or at the time TVL was written… with some counseling and/or medication, he might have had a better life.
The reason I love Only Lovers Left Alive is it shows that a character (Adam) can be severely mentally ill, in this case depressed and suicidal, and still be seen as lovable and capable of being loved and loving in return without being “cured” of their mental illness, and that a mentally ill character can have other attributes aside from being mentally ill while still showing the impact being mentally ill has on his personality.
Adam from OLLA is an extremely important character to me you guys.
The reason I love Only Lovers Left Alive is it shows that a character (Adam) can be severely mentally ill, in this case depressed and suicidal, and still be seen as lovable and capable of being loved and loving in return without being “cured” of their mental illness, and that a mentally ill character can have other attributes aside from being mentally ill while still showing the impact being mentally ill has on his personality.
Adam from OLLA is an extremely important character to me you guys.
I-want-my-IWTV 