Book 13 - Head On Fire

Title: Reasons to Stay Alive

Author: Matt Haig

Genre: memoir/essays/self-help

Welp, I found it. This is the book, the one I've been looking for without actually realizing I was looking for it. I've been trying to capture it somehow, in my head and on paper, ever since I was 9 years old, and Haig has actually done it.

This is the book on depression and anxiety that I have always wanted - have needed, even, at points in my life. Haig achieves something that I (and potentially a whole lot of other people with mental health funhouses for brains) have been trying to wring out of my head for years and years and years. Through short essays and long essays and stories and lists, Haig balances the emotional charge of the particular flavour of pain that is anxiety/depression + an almost-but-not-quite clinical distance that allows the subject material to be more than just a heartbreaking wallow. This book gives both people who share Haig's experiences and those who don't with clear, concise, and accessible facts, metaphors, and first-hand experiences. They are personal stories, the things he has learned from his own experiences, the things that work for him and don't work for him, and that means what's true for him is not true for me or others like us - but he gives us the language, the ability to point to his words and go "yes, not that but like that."

Rating: 🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓