Get wherever you’re going.

I posted this originally on Facebook one night, when I was randomly breaking down. Thought I’d share this with you all.

______________

Music is a powerful thing.

How something as simple as a few notes on a guitar can link together, form a song, and be so damn appealing to the human ear, in some cases, is beyond science. What’s even more insane is how some people are so damn good at creating this thing called “music”, they get hailed as gods. Saints. Whatever.

If a band can be a religion, mine is Metric.

I shouldn’t necessarily have to explain, but Metric is a band I discovered riding the bus to a junior high I now regret the years of. Over the following year, I kept listening over and over again to the few songs I had bought in between a crap school year and girls I didn’t have the balls to talk to. It was only until after a traumatic end to a summer and my first girlfriend breaking up with me that I really paid attention to Metric. I loved the band before, but it was different this time. I suddenly developed a serious case of depression, and I’d lock myself up in my bedroom, denying contact to the world. It sounds cliche, but true story. And it was bad. I had at least 2 suicide attempts in one month, but both were avoided because of music. More specifically, lead singer Emily Haines’s solo project, The Soft Skeleton. This was a collection of acoustic piano songs made by Emily, written in bad times in the nursing of baby Metric, and more importantly, the passing of Emily’s father, Paul Haines, in 2003.

However, in the more recently released songs of this project, Emily turns slowly to a more bright tone after the positive progress of Metric, and more personal revelations about herself. I sort of followed in her footsteps and eventually regained enough self-esteem to start a new school year, Soft Skeleton and Metric in hand. Shortly after, I fell in love with another girl. And what feels like even more shortly after, she lost interest and I was broken once again. Maybe worse than the first time.

There’s something strange… when you look back and remember going home, turning on the laptop and turning down the lights, then sitting in a quiet room, and literally googling “ways to commit suicide”. That was kind of the darkest thing I’ve done to this day, and it still scares me.

During this, I quietly put on “The Last Page”, and quickly broke down crying. I forget most of that day from there.

So… depression, anxiety, loneliness and a generic fear of the outside world followed (the latter I still vaguely hold to this day). I’ve since recovered, but be aware that literally happened only in December of 2010. But I’ve gotten over my past. Things still haunt me, but not as painful as before. I keep myself alive with “Help I’m Alive”, because I can relate to every lyric in the song.

I tremble

They’re gonna eat me alive

If I stumble

Can you hear my heart beating like a hammer?/If we’re still alive, my regrets are few

If my life is mine, what shouldn’t I do?

I get whereever I’m going, I get whatever I need

while my blood’s still flowing, and my heart still beats

The last part makes me smile. The entire song reassures me that shit can and will get better, and that I’m not (usually) alone.

Metric’s been with me for seemingly every major event in my teenage life. It’s why I think I can get through some of the stuff I put up with. It’s a part of me. And I know alot of people who don’t like the sort of non-mainstream indie rock niche music I do, and I have to put up with alot of bullshit against stuff like Metric that I would prefer not to hear.But fuck it. I love Metric. And that’s not going to fucking change. Metric… is more than a band to me. It’s.. a way of life. And maybe I’m being obsessed and I’m using too many hyperboles in this… thing that was going to be a paragraph but is now some sort of fucked up essay…  But listen to me.

…There are some parts of you that you can’t lose. I mean what’s in your heart. What you feel and love and keep by your side. Maybe it’s a girl/boyfriend, maybe it’s a pet, whatever. You just know that you love it, and you couldn’t possibly live without it. You’ve spent nights thinking long and hard about it. Every time you think about it or hear it’s name you get butterflies in your stomach. You’ve sighed, dreamt, felt for and cried about it.

That, is what Metric, is to ME.

Again, music is a powerful thing. It can trigger human emotions that some of us never knew we had. I’ve danced, sang, played, laughed, and cried over Metric. Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m already insane and I’m just trying to hang on to something, but Metric to me is more than a band, maybe it’s more than music. To me, it’s a way of life. It’s the only thing I believe in and I’d die without. It’s kept my head up and it’s reminded me of who I am. I can live with broken relationships, a family I never got along with, and a struggle to find a career, but without music, without METRIC, I don’t know what I’d live for.

Metric is my life.

And I wanna LIVE IT OUT!!