Art, A Tool for Mitigating Despair.

What does life become for us without the hand of art holding us up?

As someone that has long since battled with depression, suicide and internal apathy, I can’t imagine a world without art as a creative outlet or means of comfort to guide us through our darkest moments and into brighter days.

Its more than a hobby or an aesthetic. It becomes a function of survival for many of us. A lifeline that never asks questions or demands explanations. When everything feels empty, when people become disconnected, art has always remained close by. Sometimes it speaks for us, other times, it just listens.

Many artists (whether they realize it or not) use their art as a tool for mitigating despair, it’s part of why I became an artist. When things get so heavy and you find a way out of the dark, all you want to do is prevent those feelings from happening ever again, for yourself and for others. It is a form of resistance, a protest against the darkness. You learn to shape your pain into something others can feel, not to glorify it, but to give it purpose. To remind yourself and anyone watching that there is still something left to say, still something left to feel.

When I hold my camera, when I take a picture, for the brief second I hear the shutter, I feel like a little less of me is taken to the hollow, like it’s tethering me to the world I want so dearly to love in every waking moment. That sound reassures me that I am still here, that I still care enough about the world i inhabit to frame it, to preserve it.

It’s hard for most people to communicate, to fully express themselves without fear of judgement or ridicule, but art allows us to speak freely, to form our own language that others can inherently connect with on an internal level. It creates a space where raw honesty is allowed to exist freely. There's something deeply human in that, something ancient... To speak without speaking, to be understood without needing to explain. Art gives us that, and for many of us, its the only place we have truly felt heard.

We’re all just trying to find our center, trying to find our peace amongst this chaos and often times art gives us structure, it gives us a path to follow regardless if we’re creating or consuming it. It becomes a form of guidance when everything else feels disorienting. Whether its photography or painting or music or sculpture, it creates order out of internal disorder. Its something we can lean on, something that does not shift when the rest of the world becomes uncertain.

Art becomes that mirror that reflects not just who we are, but what we have survived.

No, Art doesn’t fix everything. It doesn’t cure the heartache or erase the memory. It doesn’t prevent the next depressive spiral or shut out the noise entirely. But it gives us a place to put it. It gives the pain form, and sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes that’s all we need, to move the weight from inside us into something outside, even if for just a little while.

And maybe, just maybe, that external thing, whether it’s a photograph, a poem, a painting, or a song, end up reaching someone else. Maybe it touches them in a way that makes them feel less alone, maybe it lets them breathe a little easier, maybe it keeps them here.

I think about that a lot. About the idea that something I make might help someone else keep going. That something I created in a moment of pain might be what helps someone else survive theirs. That’s a big part of why I keep doing this.

Because we don’t always get second chances but through art, we can give them to someone else.

Art gives us one more minute, one more hour, one more day, to try and breathe a little longer.