This song just gets me.  When I first heard it, I instantly connected with it.  It was the constant thoughts that swirled in my head, my inner monologue in song form.  I had everyone I knew listen to it.  If you want to experience what living with depression sounds like…. this song is great for that.  

Although this song is about the struggle of constantly going from manic to depressive, any one who suffers from depression can relate to these feelings.  We are aware of feeling  like you can’t get out of your bed, no matter how badly you want to.  We know the degrading voice that has a remark after every thought, attaching to whatever insecurity it can find.  We can relate to being aware, the observer, of watching the bad thoughts creep in and take over.

Mental health awareness month is about ending this stigma of feeling like we have to “fall apart in private” because it hits us harder, we require more support, and we start to feel like burdens to others.  It IS a chemical imbalance. It causes us to act in ways that we can’t easily control.  We feel alone, because no one wants to have these types of conversations.  Hardship, emotions, other peoples’ issues... they make people uncomfortable, sometimes even the people closest to us.  Because of that, sometimes we do wish we were dead.  It can a be fleeting random thought that we catch and stop in its tracks, or it lasts several weeks, months, years. The chemical imbalance controls us, unless we learn to beat it.  Beating it isn’t easy.  It means being vulnerable. It means talking and putting yourself out there, at least to someone. It means understanding that sometimes the chemical imbalance wins, but it’s not the end of the world.  Life is hard. Living with mental illness makes it that much harder.  But there is a reason to get up and keep trying everyday, and that reason is because when you start healing, you start to love yourself and see yourself as you were made.  You start to become the person that you want to be, not the person you learned to become because of the harshness of the world.  && when you start healing,  you start spreading it.  And that light you carry in the darkness that is mental illness…...is a light that shines for all the others out there on their journey with you.  WE see you. I SEE YOU! You are worth it. You are beautiful. You are LOVED!