smooti asked:

the way you've written Ruth's depression and other issues has majorly improved since Roomies/It's Walky. This strip was pretty close to home (in not necessarily a bad way, keep up the good work)

Honestly, I think I largely owe the improvement to it being a lot easier to look back from the outside and see how depression was, rather than try to write about it from the inside not knowing it was even a problem – like trying to write about drowning WHILE you’re drowning and also without understanding that drowning is a thing.  Writing Ruth in 1999 was like trying to figure out what lungs do as they’re filling up with water.  

Also, 18 years later, I’ve had the, um, benefit(?) of witnessing it in others.  As I write Billie and Ruth, I write it with the knowledge of having been both Billie and Ruth.  Billie’s calloused fear, Ruth’s dark fatalist humor… these are all too familiar.  

I am glad that if our brains have to make us go through this, I am at least able to share these feelings with other people and that they’re able to find meaning in them.