Good Damage: An unhealthy obsession.

When I was around 15, was when I started turning my negative emotions and experiences into somewhat relevant things:

I started recording, producing, and releasing my own songs, songs that reflected a variety of emotions, all of them negative.

And it felt good, it felt good because in my mind everything has a price, and at that moment, the price of a "well written" or "well composed" song was that: living through

traumatic experiences. And having the ability to turn bad into "good" was something very special to me. Even if it could break me, and I would engage in harmful behavior.

We are shaped by the media we consume and the experiences we go through, and having experienced traumatic events, social reject, bullying, drug and alcohol abuse

at a relatively younger age did shape me as a person.

Undoubtedly I am not the same person I was when I was... let's say 17, but one thing that managed to survive for a while was this obsession with turning bad into good.

"What was the point of going through something bad if you're not going to do something with it?" At least get something valuable out of it; A song, a video, a script, an illustration.

This sentiment extended through a big part of my time in university, and I only broke out of it around late October of 2020.

Right now I like composing lo-fi, acoustic, and soft indie songs. And most of them do not reflect experiences or instances I would have liked to portray, nor do my paintings or characters and the stories I write. And it used to bother me. Fairly recently as well, now that my therapy is coming to an end, I realized I haven't portrayed those positive emotions in any way, I haven't shared with the world what it is like, what I've learned, how it impacted me, and I haven't made any beautiful art that embodies those emotions, after all, my therapist taught me that sometimes we are very unreliable narrators of our own stories.

So, am I not making good use of those good thoughts then?

Not necessarily.

I think my newest work represents this femininity, freedom, and self-realization, and improvement that is part of my life now, and I have been doing that without really noticing, or without it being intentional.

This unhealthy obsession was represented in an episode of Bojack Horseman, titled "Good Damage"

Good Damage is the tenth episode of Season 6, and it premiered with the rest of Part 2 of Season 6 on January 31, 2020.

The episode is mostly about my favorite character in the show, Diane, and how she struggles to write her memoir, based on her trauma, negative experiences, and emotions.

"If I don't write my book of essays now, that means all the damage I got isn't good damage. It's just damage.

I have gotten nothing out of it, and all of those years, I was miserable for nothing."

When I first watched the episode I couldn't help myself, I broke down in tears. It was an episode that hit me so hard. The animation did a great job of supporting the themes in the episode as well, and my personal relationship, for lack of a better word, with the character of Diane helped and made this episode way more relatable than others.

I'm not going to spoil this episode for you all, but it is one of my favorites and in general a very well-written one.

See I think it's hard to escape this mentality, this way of approaching life, especially if you're a creative or artsy person. It's hard to quit this behavior.

It was easier for me to give up other things because this was something that was rooted in my head and was destroying everything around in my mind.

It prohibited me from enjoying new things, new experiences, and more.

When we become better people, I think it is fine to simply sit down, enjoy a cup of coffee, and play a video game, or watch a movie, or do whatever fills you, and your creative needs.

Whether it is going from writing a memoir book about trauma, to writing a book about a teenage girl who is a mall detective. Or going from writing an entire album about anxiety, depression, and loneliness, to making simple songs about ice cream, and being a cowgirl. There is no such thing as “good damage”, nor are we obligated to transform said emotions into something that we deem productive, sometimes the damage is just… damage.