Mental Health and Queer Romance: Where Real Life and Fiction Intersect
I’ll be the first one to admit that fiction as a whole has steadily evolved in the way authors portray characters living with various mental health diagnoses. A growing number of authors recognize that a person’s diagnosis can’t be separated from their lived experiences. Indeed, those lived experiences occur as they do because of that inseparability.
Yet I’ve read fiction—particularly in queer romance—that treats characters’ neurodivergence as an aside. Worse yet, authors treat these diagnoses as character quirks. As though said neurodivergence makes that character especially talented or emotionally well-rounded. It’s important for queer romance authors to understand just how inaccurate and inauthentic that type of representation is.
I live with six mental health diagnoses. Believe you me, there are days I wouldn’t wish even one of them on another person, let alone the combination. So, what do I do instead?
My current WIP’s main protagonist lives with a mental health diagnosis that affects him both physically and mentally. He is me, yet at the same time, he’s his own person and his journey is his own to go through. Writing queer romance gives me the freedom and ability to normalize neurodivergence from my own perspective. Dani Abernathy reminds authors,
You can only be as honest with the reader as you are with yourself, so take the time to understand how this story has grown from your experiences, is shaped by your values, and what you hope to accomplish through it.
As I have noted, there are recommendations available on how people can lead discussions about mental health. Concurrently, I stress the importance of treating neurodivergent folx with empathy and compassion. The same goes for how queer romance authors write and talk about mental health in their stories. Here’s how real life and fiction intersect in my stories.
Photo by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash
Mental Health in Real Life
Over the past twenty years, I’ve steadily had my neurodivergence honed. My first diagnosis came in spring 2004, midsemester during my junior year of college. I loved that my college offered no-cost counseling services to students. However, a six-session limit over the course of the entire school year? Not so helpful when you’ve got a “depression” diagnosis stamped on your file. Sometimes I think, “Well, it’s only gone downhill from there, huh?”
“Our mental health dictates the way that we see and experience the world around us,” says Louise Nealon.
In the grand scheme of things, there’s been a lot more good days than bad. Still, that doesn’t mean the journey to the (mostly) stable life I have now hasn’t been fraught with potholes. My writing over that same amount of time has been reflective of that. It’s why I’ve still got my very first fanfiction story locked in a two-factor-authenticated vault.
I love to go back and read sections of that story at a time. There’s a clear demarcation of moments when my emotional maturity went up another level. The clearer demarcations, though, showed my frontal cortex was still on its maturation journey. In fact, it had backpedaled a few miles.
I may still have the sense of humor of a prepubescent teenager, sure. Puns and wordplay are my jam, and I will not apologize for that. In fact, I revel in it. I’m not the only neurodivergent who appreciates that their differently organized brain at least made us funny.
Mental Health in Fiction
Living at the crossroads of several mental health diagnoses was bound to influence my original fiction stories. I’m confident enough in who I am that I can put that on the page without fear. I’m honoring the readers who accept me for who I am unconditionally. Simultaneously, a person’s neurodivergence should never be dramatized for entertainment’s sake.
Yes, my main protagonist lives with a mental health diagnosis. He has a psychiatrist who also offers talk therapy. That psychiatrist character is an amalgamation of the best of the mental health professionals I’ve seen over the past 20 years. I have done this on purpose.
Susan DeFreitas explains this decision that we queer romance authors often make.
In writing about things that occurred in our lives, we often come to understand them in a new light, and by telling stories based in the truths of our own experience, we increase the odds of our work connecting with the personal truths of others.
That protagonist’s neurodivergence plays a vital role in his character arc, and not in a melodramatic or cookie-cutter way. It’s important to his growth and change arc. Sure, some of the emotionally heavy scenes in my story are based off real-life experiences, but they’re fictionalized in enough of a way that readers can still identify with the events.
Question why you’re choosing to add a mental health diagnosis to your character’s profile. Does it serve the story? Or is it just there to argue inclusivity without being a realistic portrayal?
Every neurodivergent person you know—and a lot you don’t—appreciates you kindly tucking that piece of the profile away for another character it’ll better serve.
Where the Two Intersect
The most prevalent writing advice I hear—and loathe with every part of me—is to write every day. If you make a habit of writing daily, it becomes engrained. I can’t and won’t force myself to write when I’m not in the right headspace. It’s bad enough when my characters don’t talk to me because I’m putting them in situations that don’t align with their story goals or character arcs. If I tried to force them to talk just for the sake of writing, I’d never put together a coherent story.
I admit to using my fiction to vicariously work out my own various traumas, experiences, and healing options. I know for a fact that I’ll be bringing aboard neurodivergent sensitivity readers to ensure I haven’t become one of those authors who incorrectly shows mental health diagnoses on the page.
Like my characters, though, sometimes I need to take a step back from the writing process completely. I have to remind myself, visually and mentally, that telling my stories is worth the struggle in the moment. It’s worth the wordless days, the days when my brain wants nothing more than to sit in the dark and stare at a wall for five hours. It’s those days that I recall Beth O’ Leary’s advice, “Give yourself the space, the trust, and the time, and that story will come to you. And when it does, it’ll be magical.”
Photo by Nick Karvounis on Unsplash
To Sum It All Up
The National Alliance on Mental Illness stresses that “[p]eople with mental health conditions can and do pursue higher education, succeed in their careers, make friends, and have relationships. Mental illness can slow us down, but we don’t need to let it stop us.”
It’s vital that we continue the fight to end the stigma around discussing and experiencing mental health conditions. Neurodivergent folx deserve to see ourselves accurately represented in fiction alongside our queerness. Both intersectionalities are as much a part of us as our DNA. Moreso, we have a moral obligation to accurately and fairly represent queerness and neurodivergence in our own fiction.
Honestly, one of my biggest fiction pet peeves is the Happily Ever After. I know, strange for someone who both proudly writes and edits queer romance. I love a good happy ending. It’s kind of the point of the whole romance genre, queer and non-queer. The more realistic romance story ending, though, shows how a character’s life is in line with Katie Shepard’s view. The characters are “changed for the better by love and yet still expect to manage realistic pressures in their happy future.”
It’s why I prefer the Happy For Now ending. I love to read 85,000 or more words about characters who struggle, internally and externally. They know they can deal with the pressures of life even as they balance their mental, spiritual, and emotional boundaries. It’ll take a lot of upheaval to get there, but the Happy For Now endings offer more hope, more healing, more persistence to keep fighting through the dark days.
“Long is the way, and hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light.” Or so John Milton writes.
Reflecting On Your Story One Word At A Time!
