New post on Mrshawking.com -- "Mr. Ambrose Hawking"

New blog entry on Mrshawking.com!

"Mr. Ambrose Hawking"

Though I've written very little in his voice, I've thought a great deal about the patriarch of the respectable, successful middle-class Hawking family, and the father of Justin and Nathaniel. He was close to and very proud of his brave younger brother, with Reginald's choice to marry the fiery, inscrutable Victoria Stanton being the only difference to ever come between them. This conflict is referenced in Like a Loss, a ten-minute play featuring the Colonel and his valet.

Ambrose is a bastion of traditional Victorian masculinity, accustomed to authority and privilege and very skeptical of the notion of women having agency. It will come as quite a shock when he is confronted by Nathaniel's new perspective on things, especially when it comes to affect the way Nathaniel decides to raise his own son.

Read the rest of the entry on the website!

Depression and disability

Just some musings on depression while I’m in a certain frame of mind.

I am prone to depression. I hate admitting that, because everybody’s depressed these days and it’s not like my burden’s heavier than anybody else’s, so what am I complaining for, but it’s unfortunately the truth. I am fairly certain it occurs only situationally— I can never remember experiencing it when I was not going through a difficult period —and that if I didn’t have anything that upset me, I would not feel the symptoms. But the hopelessness I feel in times of trouble seem in excess of simple sadness or grief.

So I guess I count as “having depression.” But even when the depression was at its worst, even when my mental state was negative to the point of despair, I always stayed functional. I was still busy and active, still highly productive, still always keeping the commitments I made. I never demonstrated any self-injurious behavior. Except for rare isolated occasions, my eating and sleeping habits remained healthy. I mean, I was still desperately unhappy and something needed to be done about that. But I wouldn’t say my depression “disabled” me. In fact, I think if a person can push on to that degree even while feeling that bad, that is the opposite of “disabled.”

Depression is a mental illness, and I would never tell someone with a mental illness that they didn’t have a real disability. But even at its worst, I definitely would not say that depression made me count as “disabled.” Still, I’m not sure that suggests an objective metric. I don’t think it’s right where people police each other for being “mentally ill enough” because they’re “only” feeling despairing and hopeless and still manage to hold their life together. I honestly reject that label for myself, but I don’t think it would be fair to invalidate it for another person in my position if it felt right to that person. So what is the definition? What’s the difference between a discontented able-bodied person and a person disabled by their mental illness? And what’s the difference in how they should be treated-- if not medically, what allowances made?