How To Never Stop Being Sad
Written By Rory Bochner
DISCLAIMER
This essay discusses mental health and mentions suicide. It was written in an altered state of mind and the events talked about happened a long time ago, and I have gotten professional mental health help since then. Always reach out and talk to someone you trust, there are people around you who can help. You can also always contact school wellbeing for support, see your coordinator or a teacher you feel comfortable talking to.
The first time I heard the song ‘How to Never Stop Being Sad’ by dandelion hands, it was 1 am. I was in bed; in the same position, I’d been in since I got home from school. My bedside table hosted a stack of dirty plates and cups, moldy food uneaten and empty cans of energy drink collecting dust. You couldn’t see my floor for the rubbish and clothes collecting dust, unwashed for weeks. Spiders with their nests had claimed a corner of my room, spreading their silver-white webbing through my belongings that I could no longer bring myself to even go near, so it just got worse and worse. My schoolwork just kept piling up until I no longer looked at my google classroom, and ignored emails from my teachers. My life was decaying in my hands, and I let it, I almost wore it like a badge of honor, dark eyebags as an accessory, lack of sleep a competition, skipping meals an achievement.
I saw it in so many people around me, joking about overworking and not sleeping, surviving on coffee and chewing gum. Maybe it made me feel less alone, but it was far from a good feeling. It tasted bitter, lukewarm, a don’t-carish act to protect the hot shame of presenting this to the people who care about you, another missing assignment to a teacher, your parents who would give their entire lives for you, your friends who adore you and just want you to be happy. The people who have constructed and held up your life, and you dangle it in front of them, letting it fall without accepting help.
When you are achingly sad so much more than you are happy, it settles into a consistent, dull ache, and you learn to find comfort in it. Find the space in your cluttered, rotting room to sleep, don’t fight it, don’t even try to be happy because happiness becomes such a raw and fragile emotion that makes returning to the deep sadness so jarring. And in the short term, the dull ache of consistency is bearable, but it slowly wears you down and down and down, until there’s nothing left. Listening to ‘How to Never Stop Being Sad’ was a sharp stab to the stomach.
‘Talk down on yourself whenever possible
My life is shit because I deserve it, right?’
‘Allow yourself to lose interest in the things you love
Watch as you begin to take a backseat
To the world around you, don't fight it
Become a secondary character in your own motion picture’
I once heard someone ask the question; do you like being sad? I don’t remember the answer or the context, but the question stuck with me, and I began really thinking about it when I heard these lyrics. No one likes being sad, or at least, I know I don’t like being sad. So why am I here, listening to sad music on purpose, letting my values and beliefs all turn cynical?. I haven’t talked to my best friend in days, I force myself to stay awake later and later, ignoring the aching in my red eyes staring at the blue light from my phone screen. I no longer try to distract myself when tears start falling, just letting the salt drip down my cracked and bleeding lips, down my throat. 20% of teens experience depression, and 10 – 15% suffer from symptoms at any one time.
Depression is an invisible battle, and it’s impossible to just decide to stop being sad, but I think ‘How to Never Stop Being Sad’ shines a harsh light on the mindset that has grown so popular in the teens and young adults around us. You’re not working hard enough if you’re not in pain, everyone has it worse than you so just shut up and ignore your problems, right? Mental illness becomes a competition; who’s hurting themselves more, who’s sadder, who’s dying faster?
I get really unfairly angry and upset when people are so self-deprecating, and I know my anger is just a reflection of myself. I bury it deep because facing up to it means that I can no longer sit here passively and watch my life sink and tell myself that I deserve it. It means that I have to take my heart out of its casing, and actually work to be happy. Earlier this year everything became too much for me, the ache grew too big and too consistent, my thoughts, my anxiety, my sadness and my guilt grew too much, and one afternoon, I sat on the train platform, lights too bright and head too heavy, waiting for a train to come, and for me to fall in front, and fade away.
But of course, there is no way for you to just fade away. The roots of your life are spread deep, even if you can’t see them. How can you just leave without saying anything to the people who love you? So, I am still here. Because I still have things to say to people. Until I can live for myself, I have people to live for. At first, I felt completely trapped. I felt as though I had no life here, I’d ruined everything, but I couldn’t die and leave my friends and family with the guilt, because none of it is their fault. Most of all, I wanted to protect my little brother. I want to see him grow up, live his full life, protect him from ending up like me. So what choice do I have but to live? Trying to fix the hardwired mindset of self-loathing I’d settled into was hard. It’s a literal battle of fighting the thoughts as they come up, stop making the self-deprecating jokes, do tiny acts of self-care, take sadness out of your personality. In the most cheesy phrasing possible, it’s waking up and choosing to be kind to yourself. And eventually, maybe it will hurt less.
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