Content Warning: This post deals with the topics of depression and suicide. If those are things that you don’t want to be exposed to, right now, don’t feel pressure to keep reading.
If you ever feel like you need help, or just someone to talk to, you can call 988 for the Suicide And Crisis Lifeline, or text “HOME” to 741741.
You CAN get better, and you are worthy of love from other people, and most importantly, yourself.
Life is hard. Sometimes you aren’t paying attention and are just breezing by and feeling good. Forgetting for a moment, the mechanisms and unseen forces that are trying to grind you under the wheels of capitalism in order to fertilize the growth of oligarchs — this shit is grim! And we’re all dealing with it. Some of us better than others, of course. But it’s hard for everyone.
And it’s not a competition to see who the most miserable fuck is. Who the most sad sack piece of shit is. I mean, what would you even want as a prize if it were? NOT being miserable would be the only thing you’d want, but that’s sort of the antithesis to the whole depression olympics thing, isn’t it?
Continuing from where we were in the last track, I thought that my depression made me special. That that was what I had to offer the world. It defined me.
But you can’t live like that — I couldn’t live like that. If that’s the way it had to be, I’d rather not live.
So, I had to change. And it’s not like I snapped my fingers or flipped a switch — like I had the power inside me the whole time and all I had to do was believe in myself, or some other woo woo self-help bullshit. No, dude, I needed real, doctor prescribed medication1.
One of the reasons I had resisted taking that healthier — and in the long run, lifesaving path — was a little bit of fear, to be honest. Familiarity bred from self contempt.
The Darkness is what I had committed myself to. Without it, what was I? What would I have that I could base my personality on if not abject misery? Getting tattoos? Going to as many Pearl Jam concerts as I could? Collecting vinyl or comicbooks? Getting into cars or motorcycles? Hiking or camping?
Wait, all those things are things you have to spend a lot of money on. Are people with money the only ones that are allowed to have personalities under capitalism? Or are all those baubles used just to distract from not having a personality, like when a really good looking person is able to enchant everyone around them and isn’t forced to do any introspection or examine the greater world around them? Buying a personality instead of having to forge one in the fires of adversity.
You know, that grim capitalist shit I was talking about in the first paragraph...
Medication helped to clear the miasma of misery so I could more clearly see the Gordian Knot of my psyche before me. A tangled mess of broken thoughts and coping mechanisms.
But what do you to do with these strands as you pull them apart? Won’t everything just become a jumbled up mess again?
I’m worthless. I’m useless. I deserve no sympathy / I have no clear purpose. You have my apology / My sight disgusts you. No love is meant for me / I’ll never, ever please you. My best is a travesty
I can’t meet your standard. I will not succeed / ‘Cause I’m completely worthless. I am just a weed
My life is of no value. I live ignominy / Your God cannot save me. My hell is being me / I’m too proud to admit: My life is for nothing / This is a cry for help. I wanna be set free
I don’t have the answers. And I don’t get a chance / I’m completely worthless. Pull back your friendly hand
I’d better clean up if I wanna be something / I gotta make a change if I don’t wanna feel the sting / Or maybe I’ll just succeed without you. I don’t need an enemy / Or maybe there’s no hope. Only one way to be set free
I have gotta escape this pit of my demise / ‘Cause I’m completely worthless in your worthless eyes
Am I singing with a little bit of a twang, here? What’s the deal with that?
And yeah, I busted out the E-Bow on this one. I got it because we were also covering “Wishlist” from Pearl Jam, so I had to get my money’s worth and figure out other songs to use it on. Matt is playing left/lead guitar, and mine is too distorted to mix properly to really be heard. I’m not sure, but I think Harry is playing bass on this one. He had his one effect pedal2 and he wanted to use it on this song, too.
I asked Kevin if there was anything he wanted to say about this song since he wrote it, and here’s what he gave me:
This song was meant to be hard, but when I think about the lyrics now, it just makes me sad for 16 year-old me. I really meant those things. Depression sucks.
Useless trivia: I was better at keyboard than guitar back then, so this song was actually written on a keyboard. I still hear the Casio-knock-off Hammond V3 in my head when I think about the song.
The whole thing was an excuse to get the word “ignominy” in a song. I learned that word while we were doing The Crucible and I really liked it.
I sang the words, but didn’t ever really absorb them. They weren’t birthed from my skull, so I didn’t have a cerebral-umbilical connection to them. I just figured that they were words that sort of fit the lyrical motif that most of the lyrics that I was writing were. Kevin understood the assignment.
However, this was the first song we had as a band. There was no precedent set. The rest of us were still learning how to play our instruments, and Kevin just came in with a fully written song for us to focus on so we wouldn’t wander off into Jam Land unprepared, trying to navigate our way through without any of the skills or knowledge we would need to survive those wilds. The only song we would end up collaborating on — writing as an entire band — during our entire time as a band was “Beef Candle.”
One thing that always helps you to survive a situation — which I guess in this metaphor that I’ve constructed, is being in a band? Trying to write songs? — is having other people with you. It would be easier if you didn’t have to rely on anyone else for things, but no one is completely self-sufficient. No one is entirely self-made. No one likes to be rejected or told no, but many hands do make light work3.
We had a creative bond. Kevin was the Chamberlin to my Corgan. The Cameron to my Cornell. The Ulrich to my Hetfield... Okay, that one felt a little gross, but I’m a slave to the Rule Of Threes.
It may not have been conscious or intentional, but those lyrics that Kevin wrote connected to me. We were of a kind. And that’s something that the Art that really makes an impact on people does, is it forms some sort of connection. No two people are exactly the same, yet we all have experiences and feelings that are similar. We can’t actually feel the exact same thing as someone else, but just like a simile, we can know what it’s like.
The red yarn in that Gordian Knot of conflict and self-loathing is supposed to connect us to other people like a conspiracy board. Except, I guess, there should be tin cans on the ends so that you can stay in contact with the people on the other ends like you would in a black and white treehouse life, or something.
And we all need and yearn for connection. It drives some of us to stay in unhealthy relationships, just so we won’t be alone. It drives us to cults, because they make us feel accepted. It drives us to seek social situations in public, like bars or amusement parks or movie theaters or concerts.
Being depressed and withdrawn was only going to put me in the position to connect with other misanthropes. People that usually don’t have the greatest personalities, or act in ways that are frowned upon. Incels. Manosphere types. Anti-natalists. Real fucking ghouls.
Being nice and wanting to bring joy to other people is a way better way to go about it, though. People who are nice and aren’t dipshits are pleasant to be around. To have a friend, you have to be a friend.
The feelings of depression had my rational mind trying to find a reason why for how I felt, so it invented reasons like looking at a cross-eyed Rorschach Test. Again, we’re all going through our own shit — life is hard and we’re all struggling with our own tribulations — so why not try to lift up the other people that are down here, too? Dragging others down isn’t going to make anyone feel better. Feeling better makes you feel better. Do those things that make you a better person.
Be open. Open to others. Their stories and experiences. Their feelings and emotions. Open your heart, even though that means tumbleweeds and stray dogs could get in. You may think it’s safer, but you can’t close it. Having a closed heart may offer some protection, but it will also suffocate you.
You have to accept that there will be dark times at points. But if you’re holding onto that connection, someone will always be able to find you.
-bcp
Not the bartender distributed self-medication that I had been dosing myself with, that was usually part of the payment we got once we started playing more after we were all 21.
The Boss CE-2B
But magnets ... how do they work?
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