Listen / Subscribe on iTunes and Google Play
This episode we’ll be talking about Pouya, Wicca, SuicideBoys, Lil Peep and their influence on during a time I had really messed up depression and about how I ultimately got over my mental mess ups. And how I finally broke my chains of depression and finally feel happy.
I never had that angsty rebellious teenage years although my music choices would say otherwise. It wasn’t until my 20s that I really faced a weird mental change and self doubt that scared me. Now I don’t take depression lightly, I had it probably for 4 years straight and with various happy moments but my early 20s just felt so shit that I was really worried about myself and my future.
At 21 I had my first real panic attack while driving to work. The panic attack was because I had yet to build a million dollar company, I was too late to be the youngest whatever and I put a lot of pressure on myself because of it.
I almost blacked out, swerved off the road and couldn’t breathe for what felt like an eternity.
I stuck my hand out the window hoping someone would come to my call but nothing, so I called the 911 had the fire department block half of a major high way just because I couldn’t handle my simple life.
This was the start of a downward spiral.
The doctor required me to go to therapy with the threat that if I couldn’t be mental sound, I wouldn’t be able to drive. That just scared me even more, I was becoming a liability.
Fortunately, I took the therapy pretty seriously after the first session.
Funny enough, I thought I was above therapy for some reason and literally sitting in the waiting room looking around I’m thinking to myself, I’m the next Bill Jobs over here.
I was literally about to bounce when therapist calls me in and I reluctantly went in.
Luckily I had a really cool hipster like therapist who also loved music so we wanted up getting through a lot of my issues and it helped me a bunch. We ended up getting along so well that we had to end sessions because it felt like I was paying a best friend to talk to me.
Anyways, this was my anxiety stage of my life. He gave me the tools manage it and it was working. Literally one week later I was hit with the scariest moment of my life. I’m making out with my girlfriend and it hit me, I don’t love this girl. But the feeling hit me like being locked in a box underground buried a live. Like in one moment happiness guy in the world to struck my lightning and dead.
I thought that up into that moment I loved her and that this feeling had to be a mistake and I would come over this feeling and everything will be good again. I felt so sick and an overwhelming numbing for the next 2 years while I stuck with this girl. I remember going to my Dads sitting on the couch just wanting to cry but having to laugh and act like I was enjoying being with family. I remember going to the beach trying to enjoy myself but just having a dark dark cloud in my mind. What even worst is that instead of asking for help from the therapist I once had, I needed to push through it.
Although the song didn’t exist while these two years went by, Kill Yourself Part 3 by SuicideBoys, that hook is literally my mind during this time. “It’s not fair, I found love It made me sad to get back You’ll never see daylight If I’m not strong, it just might It’s not fair,”
I didn’t have facebook or instagram to pour my emotions into because I was in my 20s, I wasn’t this teen that used social media to get things off my chest. I didn’t have friends to talk to because I messed those relationships up. I just had a girlfriend who loved me to death but had no clue I didn’t have feelings any more and a job that made me want to blow my brains out to.
So how did I deal with it? I don’t really remember, just. Day by day trying to look in the mirror smile and every once in a while skateboard. Luckily, I don’t have any interest in drugs or drinking else who knows what could have happened to me. I guess I felt like my depression was enough issues that I didn’t need anything else to make me feel numb when I was already numb. I guess how I hurt myself to help me get over it was just to smile and not let anyone know I had any issues.
Luckily, these two years were the worst of the depression. I guess as time goes on you just feel numb all the time and become used to it. Then one day I was given an opportunity to quit my job and move to China. I was still dating the same girl and I figured because I was scared that if I broke up with her the depression would get worst, and who knows.
I was going to spend the next 3 months in China and come back and do it. Luckily for me, I accidentally found a new girl. I ended it with the girl back home and was enjoying the exciting life of living aboard.
But happiness doesn’t come that easy, about a month into the relationship, in a staged underground rave, I met the girl I was sure I was going to marry. But again my depression hit me and said you can’t leave your relationship for some one new, she loves you, all you want to be is loved. And for the next 8 months like I went through my next wave of depression. Around this time, I was gracefully met with the pure feelings of Lil Peep.
My introduction:
Tigers Jaw -> Adam McIlwee -> Wicca -> Lil Peep
Every song that kid (Lil Peep) came out with made my depression almost feel like a badge of honor to be able to feel what he felt. My mind was getting really screwed up at this point almost like this sad boys music was addicting because it made me feel better about myself while making me feeling sadder and sadder.
I remember sitting at my work deck here in china, looking out the window getting teared eye when the song girls came on. I was in love with the girl I couldn’t be with, a girl who loved me to death had me physically but not mentally and I just wanted everything to end. I remember looking all around the room thinking if only these people knew what I feel feeling while at the same time thinking, I’m deeper than all these people. I’m emotionally messed up but that made me more alive. It doesn’t but depression doesn’t that to you.
All I had to do was break up with someone but come on, I couldn’t do it. It seemed like when I was with girl A I was fine but when I was alone, my mind was tearing me apart, Lisa. I couldn’t go to bed or wake up without thinking about girl B. I was hating the person I was turning into and for 8 months straight I was back in my dark cloud mind listening to Lil Peep, SuicideBoys, Bones and Wicca. I couldn’t stop. “Running away from you takes time and pain and I don’t even want to” like Peep says.
Then Lil Peep died. It just hit me way harder than any dead in my life. He was not only helping me get through my awful situation (at least how it felt in that moment) and then he was gone. Because of that day in Nov will forever been in my memory and it woke me up. I could go at any moment and this is what I wanted my life to be like. It took a few months later to finally break up with the girl but that was after trying as hard as I could to get over girl B. I just couldn’t do it but at some point I woke up feeling so depressed that I didn’t even go into work and just laid in bed thinking I got to be a man and do it. And guess what I finally did it.
I know it sounds easy but so is saying just be happy. It’s not that easy. The break up was a mess and my mind just wasn’t health enough to handle things properly. Mental illness is no joke, you just don’t function properly, or at least how you think normal people function. And I had a chance with Girl B, which I ended up losing that one too. On accident no less, I just didn’t give myself a chance to heal from the breaking up girl A. And I thought I was going to marry Girl B, a feeling I never had before. Kills me but I’m ok…
But now I’m happy. So what changed? And this is partly why I’m so honest about something I’ve hide for 4 years straight. I found a flaw in my personality, I’m a really kind, gentle person, and for some reason previously thought to feel whole and complete I need to be in a relationship. Once I’m in a relationship because of my introverted personality I don’t have the heart to break up with someone who I can tell really loves me. So instead I ruin myself instead of ruining someone else heart.
I think Peeps line from “The Way I see things” really sums it up for me: “Take her away from me, but I’m not givin’ up on you, no It’s just the way I be It’s just the way I see things”. My mind takes these girls way from me for some reason, I just don’t see them as wife material or something. Then I don’t give up on them, I love that they love me and I want to love them back but I can’t but that doesn’t mean I wont try. And why? Well that’s just the way my mind works, the way I see things.
I’ve identified this after truly letting my heart and mind go during my first attempt at trying a guided meditation. I found that I am love and I deserve love but I can’t just expect to find that in someone else. I’ve been single for the past ___ months and I haven’t felt so happy in my life. It’s an amazing feeling wake up every morning doing a meditation and enjoying life. I used to feel on average a 2 and now on my bad days a 7. And it wasn’t the girls faults or anything, just wasn’t our futures to be together. I had how much I hurt those girls but I’m working on forgiving myself and making myself emotionally right so that when I find the right person, I can properly be in a relationship. It’s difficult to love yourself when you have depression, trust me I know and when the music makes you feel good to have depression its even harder but your worth it.
If you’re like me, anything anyone tells you you do the opposite when it comes to bettering yourself. But try 30 days of meditation, 30 days of 1 hour fitness activity and staying off whatever vice you have that brining you down. Whats the worst that can happen?
The only thing that worries me about actually feeling happy is I’m worried I wont have the dark thoughts to be able to relate to some of this new Soundcloud, sad boys music out there but I’ve found that actually now I can enjoy it from a different view. I find it very interesting for example Pouya, how lyrically interesting and dark his stuff is. It doesn’t emotionally control but I can emotionally feel it. I don’t try to avoid this dark music because some times I need it but I’ve found that it doesn’t control me any more which I think better off.
I know this is a weird podcast his time but if it helps just one person that awesome. Usually these podcasts are more music orientated mixed with my life but this one is a little more complex.
Funny side note:
- Suicide Pimpn’ – so funny because when I was a kid, I first heard the word pimpn’ from my younger brother and it was like a bad word to use. Actually one of the few memorize I have of my mom living with us as a family was her saying we couldn’t say that. So I always thought of it as a gangster term back then and now it’s used as long another word to describe something cool. I guess it was that way back then too but putting it in front of Suicide just always makes me laugh. (In related to Carrollton by SuicideBoys)
Image from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lil_Peep,_Holland,_October_2017.png