is my writing only worth something when i'm sad?

how using your life for content is great until it isn't

It started slowly, a few bad days, the hustle and bustle of a new job, abruptly moving back to New Jersey, even though I swore I wouldn’t. I felt lost, completely alone, and devoid of any greater purpose. I hadn’t been well for a while, I can admit that now, but each choice I made, each friend I left on read, took me further down my self-destructive spiral. Sitting on the bus into the city, I filled my notes app with the words I could never let myself say out loud, the way my parents ongoing divorce was tearing me apart, how devastated I was to be away from everyone I loved—writing was the only way I could make a tiny bit of sense out of the vortex in my mind.

from lady bird (my favorite movie)

Almost exactly a year ago, the first real essay I shared online started gaining traction. I have almost no memory of it. As emails hit my inbox by the minute, alerting me to the hundreds of people subscribing to my previously quiet newsletter, I sat in my childhood bedroom and wept about my parents’ years-long divorce, how much I missed the normalcy that that bedroom used to represent. Sadness became a weapon I carefully forged, chipping away at the darkest parts of myself until I had something usable: words on pages, subscribers liking and commenting and reposting the writing I was putting out. The thinkpieces and essays where I wrote about how sad I was fueled me, reminded me that I had a purpose, and the validation I received in the form of likes, comments, and shares told me to keep going, keep channeling the sadness into some form of art. The slow sadness was pushed aside, lexapro keeping it satiated, journals hearing the worst of it and locking it away. I was my writing.

Therapists and friends and Reddit say the worst will pass, but when you’re in that dark of a space, you don’t believe it. Every day can only get worse, the thoughts and emotions hurt so intensely— they pile up and balance precariously, ready to collapse and bury you alive with the smallest movement.

It does pass. You find a job, you see the people you love, you stop writing about how much everything sucks, and the weight slowly lifts off of your chest. But the writing is not the same, it doesn't come with the necessity and urgency it used to, practically jumping out of my body with a fervor I could only attribute to the feelings of dread that surfaced if I didn’t write. I constantly ask myself if I was ever creative or if I just wrote with an intensity because it felt like it was all I had, I needed to put something out and let people tell me they loved it.

Every day, I jot ideas down in my notes, pieces of essays that never fit together, drafts that feel wrong. I wake up at 8 and begin copywriting, doing the writing that pays my rent, sits at the top of my resume. I erase every trace of myself from the words I put on those pages. Emotionless and bland, the sentences blur together, but the paychecks hit my account, so I tell myself it has to be worth something. During lunch breaks, I open a draft and try to write for myself, for you, but the well is dried up. I see my friends and cook dinner with my boyfriend and go on walks in the middle of the day, and I remember what true happiness feels like. Basking in the glow of feeling truly content, reminiscing about what I love, doesn’t instantly give me that surge of adrenaline that glued me to a page, no matter how hard I try to find that spark within me. If I’m happy, why can’t I write how I want to, how I used to?

I’m in a creative rut, I tell myself, constantly seeking justification for why I’m not writing in the way I’m capable of. The dark thoughts come back—was I ever writing because I loved it, or has this just been the byproduct of my most intense emotions spilling out, desperately needing a place to live?

When I channeled my emotions into content, people clicked subscribe. It happened so fast, I’m still trying to process why and how. I got my job because of this, I met people who have taught me so much and have unquestionably changed my life. Every person who clicks subscribe has given me a tiny boost of confidence, has slowly reminded me that what I’m doing here means something, and for that, I’ll always be grateful. The numbers keep growing, every goal I set for myself was surpassed—I set new ones, but I have a hard time accepting the good things that happen to me— a large part of me is convinced that this is some sick joke, so I never celebrate.

It’s wrong to miss a period of my life when I was so unwell, but I do. I long for that constant need to write, when I wasn’t comparing myself to others or thinking too much about how an audience would react when I shared something. The other day, I was on a walk, and I caught myself thinking about how good my writing could be if I found myself sad again. A depressive episode, maybe a bad phone call with my mom, a day or two of skipping lexapro, anything to put me in a headspace where I can create something that I deem meaningful. The divorce is settled, I live back in DC, my anxiety is still there, but it’s not consuming me. I’m content and satisfied, but I’m not writing. I’m embarrassed that I’ve been feeling this way. I’m desperately searching for inspiration in the good moments, but I’m so used to ignoring what feels positive that every idea seems to fall short; it lacks that punch that being in such a low place seemed to provide.

As unnatural as it feels, I’m stretching those muscles that have become tired, relearning to write with a process that no longer stems from the parts of me that feel broken. Two of my coworkers said something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about: life will look drastically different six or even three months from now. A year ago, writing was a necessity for me, it’s obvious now that it gave me a sense of stability in a time when I was desperate for it. Stability is something I would have traded anything for during those nights spent crying over a journal. Now that I have found it, I must hold it tight instead of trying to push it away to create content that some part of my mind or the accumulated view and like count has determined reflects my ability and quality as a writer.

Change happens without remorse for existing circumstances, and in a way, it’s a natural reset, the universe setting us up for a period of growth. I don’t know what my writing should look like, why should I? The nature of what I write about comes from the experiences that shape me, my deepest thoughts, and snippets of my life, so of course it’s meant to evolve as I do, even if it feels challenging or wrong at first, but that’s life. My writing can be good without being sad; it has to be, because my life is good.

weekly faves

• i read perfection by vincenzo latronico (if you’re someone who thinks about your relationship to social media and/or the internet, i cannot recommend this enough)

• paul committing to law school (i’m so proud of him)

• my new sandy liang x wildflower phone case

• the star wars revenge of the sith theatrical rerelease

• this dress from Abercrombie that i bought for summer

(i’m doing a full monthly wrap-up for paid subscribers with everything i read, watched, and loved, along with daily journal prompts in a post that’s going up on the 30th, so look out for that!)

as always, thank you for reading and supporting people’s princess. from when i had 10 people reading my writing to now, i’m beyond grateful that you’ve chosen to read the words i put on these pages.

you can find me on instagram @sarahcucchiara and @peoples.princess.

with love,

sarah ♡