Introducing Anhecomics
The day the seed of Anhecomics was planted in my head started out as just another day of crippling uncertainty.
In August of last year, I was going on month six of a depressive episode, and by then, I had developed a core strategy for preventing it from imploding my life: Don’t slow down.
Wake up in the morning, get a head start on work, and find a project to do after work is done until it’s time to sleep. Because the minute I slowed down, it was back to complete numbness, staring at the wall, and desperately waiting for the time to pass.
But what I was waiting for is really anybody’s guess. Rollo May put it perfectly: “Depression is the inability to construct a future.” My future was a giant blur. I had nothing to look forward to. So why wait for a future that isn’t waiting for me?
As my final year of grad school inched closer, and I was expected to spend most of my time on a thesis, this became increasingly terrifying. Examining queer online spaces for my Master’s in Mass Communication simply did not entice me anymore. The only way to make this situation worse was to force myself to spend energy I did not have on something I no longer loved.
I always have a piece of art I like to come back to whenever I am feeling down. In recent years, that piece of art has been everyone’s a aliebn when ur a aliebn too by Jonny Sun. It’s an illustrated novel about a lonely alien who comes to Earth to conduct research on our planet and its creatures.
I’ve read that book so many times now that I’ve lost count. But as I read it on this day, I thought back to the comics I drew as a child when I was bored in math. I thought about the illustrated stories I still created on occasion as an adult. I may have been an amateur when it came to comics, but an unfamiliar feeling rose in me as I contemplated doing my thesis on them.
That unfamiliar feeling? Interest. Suddenly, after months of helplessly grasping for the rope to lift me out of the hole I was in, I had nowhere to go but up.
And on my way up, I decided it only made sense to advocate for myself and people like me. Because while there are so many of us out there, it can be so easy to feel completely alone when struggling with depression.
For the past eight months, I have been developing Anhecomics, an original webcomic about clinical depression. The name Anhecomics is a portmanteau of “anhedonia,” or the inability to experience pleasure, and “comics.”
Each individual episode comes from an interview I’ve done with an anonymous person who suffers from clinical depression or other mental illness that causes depression-like symptoms. In these interviews, I search for unique details and things that keep people going when hope seems long gone. From there, I construct narratives designed to:
Promote awareness of clinical depression and its nuances;
Provide comfort to clinically depressed people through relatable stories;
Introduce patients to treatment options and self-care methods.
To protect the anonymity of my interviewees and make the narratives more universal to each reader, every person interviewed is depicted as this genderless, almost featureless character, which I call “The Blue Person”:
Anhecomics is a work of graphic medicine, a burgeoning field of study devoted to understanding how comics can be used in medical education and patient care. So far, research has drawn positive connections between patients and comics about conditions they suffer from. Short-form narratives coming from a diverse set of sources is a unique approach to the subject matter that I hope will help increase understanding of how comics, and storytelling in general, can assist in mental health treatment.
What I can say with certainty, however, is that Anhecomics has saved me. This started out as a simple thesis project for my Master’s degree, but it has become the thing that turned a once blurry future into a much clearer one.
To stay up to date on Anhecomics, please subscribe to this newsletter and follow the Instagram page.
If you are interested in contributing your voice to this project, please click here for the Anhecomics Submission Survey.
If you are struggling with depression, please click here for the official Anhecomics Resource List.
xoxo,
cooklin
“Before this a black wall had stood where the future should have been. Beyond which I could see nothing. Now a new landscape had emerged, full of possibilities.
This is how I learned to live again.
The methods I used are particular to me and can’t easily be used by anyone else. However, my advice would be this: as well as taking medication and seeking support from friends and family, a sufferer of depression should not feel shame or believe they are worthless.
Look deep into yourself for the qualities you need to survive. Your talents, hopes, dreams, and desires.
Because these are the things which will save you.”
-Daryl Cunningham, Psychiatric Tales (2010)