A Day Off
When I read books featuring characters living with mental illness, I always wonder if my main pet peeve will happen. It always bothers me when the plot catches up to the characters and they mysteriously lose all signs of their mental illness before facing off against their biggest foe.
A character who has anxiety meeting new people is suddenly able to make a rousing speech and inspire a revolution. A character who panics frequently becomes mysteriously calm before fighting a dragon or climbing aboard an enemy spaceship. And specific disorders like OCD are often not mentioned in books at all, so there’s hardly a chance of a character experiencing an obsession or compulsion in the plot’s climax.
As a child, that was always a mystery to me. I often wondered: How did the characters do it? How did they conquer their hardest challenge with so much ease that the author didn’t even have to write anything on the page? I wanted a how-to guide to help me do the same thing so I could go on an epic adventure. I thought there had to be some kind of secret I didn’t know yet, some esoteric knowledge about how to do this that I was going to discover when I got older.
What I realized instead was that the authors were relying on one of two flaws to get them through: laziness or the assumption that someone displaying symptoms of mental illness can’t actually do a quest.
In terms of laziness, some writers don’t want to figure out how to incorporate mental illness into a plot that is likely complex on its own. It can be hard enough to get characters to a certain point without giving them further challenges, but at the same time, it’s disheartening to see that the writer wasn’t willing to try to brainstorm a solution.
The worse option is that the writer might believe there is no way for a character to “feed into” mental illness and also get through the plot of a story. In my opinion, this erases the value of representation the writer was trying to get across, since in the end, the character was able to get a day off from their mental illness to save the world (or whatever else the plot may be).
As someone who has literally never had a day off, and who is currently smarting from a long day of overthinking and feeling overwhelmed by the tasks I have yet to do, I feel discouraged when I see a writer do this. I feel like the problems in my own life are more insurmountable because of the lack of belief that it is, in fact, possible to solve a problem even when dealing with extra problems on top of it.
Throughout my life, I’ve had to deal with a lot of problems. Nothing quite like what I’d find in a fantasy novel, but still, I’ve had to work my way through my fair share of difficulty without the “easy way out” of simply pretending my OCD doesn’t exist. And, as a writer myself, I wanted to see if there was a way for my favorite genre to feature characters using their mental illnesses as a way to help with the plot, not as something to throw away when the going gets tough.
This is why, when I had the opportunity, I loved co-writing a musical featuring Tass - a fantasy mechanic with OCD - but felt overwhelmed at the thought. I was very keen on the idea, but I didn’t have examples of fantasy characters with OCD to base my story on. I didn’t have anything to go off except my own experiences and books I didn’t like - and sure, it took a lot more thought and brainstorming. But in the end, I was able to find a way for Tass to use his obsessions to help with the plot instead of ignoring them to make my writing process more convenient.
And, in my own life, I try to remind myself of this. On hard days when every little step of what should be an easy task feels like an obstacle, I pretend that I’m living in the outline of a story and tell myself that there are always options. They might not be quick, easy, or practical, but they do exist, and there’s nothing stopping me from continuing to brainstorm until I find something that works.
Sometimes, I wish I could take a day off from my OCD. I wonder what it would be like to go through life without being anxious so often, to not overthink every move I make. But for me - just like it shouldn’t be for writers creating characters with mental illness - it’s not an option, and the best thing I can do is hone my creativity for both fictional stories and real life to help me find optimal solutions.
Michelle Cohen, a writer in the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.