Mad World

Music is my sole comfort when I’m suicidal.

I don’t know when I started becoming depressed, but I do remember putting a knife to my stomach and pressing hard when I was 8, so it’s possible that I’ve been depressed since then.

I’m 17 now.

For years, I’ve tried to deal with the way I’ve been raised and the way I actually am. There is no medium, for the two are extremes and being caught in the middle makes me feel stressed. I have never had someone tell me how to handle my emotions, except to just be happy or ignore them. I have never been told how to handle stress, except that I have no right to be stressed.

My family is unsympathetic and unaccepting, when all I want is their sympathy and acceptance.

So I turned to music. Of course, they don’t approve of the music I listen to. It doesn’t matter to me (but nothing matters that much to me anymore) because it gets me through one more second of suffering. I put on a happy face and put on my ipod and pretend like I’m killing myself. I daydream of death, be it my own or someone else’s who is frustrating me.

Sometimes I feel like there is no hope, but I listen to music and for 3-5 minutes, I have something keeping my head above water. When I read Jonathan Davis’s quote, “We get countless emails saying, ‘If it wasn’t for you guys, I would have killed myself.'” I realized I wasn’t alone. Korn did save my life, and I won’t sit here and deny their music can be morbid or violent. However, I feel morbid and violent. Knowing that Jon Davis survived his hardships and is offering his hand to drag me out of the water is all I need to wake up in the morning.

At the moment, I’m listening to Mad World, by Tears for Fears (but sang by Gary Jules) from the Donnie Darko soundtrack. The movie managed to make me more depressed, but I realized that the song actually makes me realize how I feel. Many things depress me at first, but later serve as an inspiration or coping mechanism.

I’m stressed. I’m hormonal. I’m told it’s just because I’m immature and don’t know real pain. I ask you: how do you measure pain or pleasure? It’s relative.

Of course, some nights I pick up a sharp edge, but I sing a song to myself and imagine someone who makes me happy, someone I’d actually live for, and put it down. I don’t want to tell others what to do with their lives, but I think that if you want to get through your depression, you first have to admit you have a problem. If a doctor asks you, admit it. If you need to, go to a counselor. Then, stop yourself and find ways of coping that don’t risk your life. When cutting got to be too dull for me, I turned to fighting and provoking guys to hurt me. I became addicted to adrenaline and that was far more risky than cutting. I actually got two concussions from this but have learned to cope with other things.

Photoshop. Friends. YouTube. Music. Movies. Books. Writing. Helping other people.

Sometimes, it feels good just to let it all out, and I’m glad I found this WP. I would never have gotten through this night safely without it.