Releasing the Notes

There is a band that I like called Boyce Avenue. They were mentioned back in the Cover Songs post, if you can’t remember them, but they take popular songs and slow them down into softer versions of the song. Back when I still took the time to read the comments on YouTube videos, someone wrote this under one of their covers:

“Welcome to Boyce Avenue, where every song is sad and nobody has any fun.”

I remember it ten years later because it really made me think, can you have a slow song that doesn’t also feel sad? The answer is yes, you can. There is a vast library of slow songs that are about love, and people dance to them at weddings. There is also a whole genre of lo-fi music that is meant to be relaxing, and it is slow, but happy. I used to listen to a lot of lo-fi music during my ketamine treatments.

So I flipped the question, can you make a sad song that isn’t also slow? Again, yes. A lot of the music I listened to in high school had fast songs about sad topics. My favorite song from My Chemical Romance was a loud, fast paced, in-your-face song where Gerard sang the phrase “I’m not okay” frequently throughout the song.

I think, when it comes down to it, we just correlate slower things in life with feeling things. Maybe the person who made that comment was going through something, and when the music was slowed down it made room for those feelings to sneak in. Or maybe I am just diving too deep into this rabbit hole, I am pretty skilled in overthinking and over-analyzing.

This thought process about sad and slow music resurfaced because lately I have been listening to Mon Rovia. He has some beautiful music, but it is all soft and slow. He plays a ukulele and has a folksy voice, and it’s fun and beautiful and introspective all at once.

Admittedly, my favorite by him is a sadder song:

While I was revisiting the slow=sad thought activity above, it was tinged this time with other flavors. Taking time to really think about mental health while I write about it here has opened up a lot of understanding for me, and I hope it does for you as a reader. So I took the thought beyond music, and into the realm of mental health.

I have witnessed and experienced a lot of cries for help. I have had people I am close to commit suicide, and even more friends who have attempted. I have had the opportunity to be the person someone has come to when faced with suicidal thoughts, and I have been the one to reach out. They manifest themselves differently, but cries for help are often soft and slow.

A few weeks back I attended a funeral for a man who took his own life. I hadn’t known him, but he was related to someone who helped shape me as a teen. I usually try to avoid funerals, so I was debating whether or not to go when I remembered a close friend who attended my mother’s funeral, even though he had never met her, and how much I appreciated his support and love through that time. So I went, just to be there for this man I had looked up to so much.

During that service, the wife of the deceased stood up to share her thoughts, and she told the story of their life. It was heartfelt, and fun, and told of a man who seemed to really be loving life, and living it well. Then she shared that even she, as his wife, hadn’t known how bad it had gotten for him lately.

An older, judgmental part of myself wanted to find fault with her for not knowing, but the growing and understanding part of me found only empathy. I know there are times when it has gotten bad for me where I put in a lot of effort to keep it from my family. I’m not the only one, I’m positive. In that state of mine I am convinced that it would cause more pain than it would help, so I don’t talk to people I care about.

I was talking to a psychologist after a time I had been open with my wife about how dark things were (which, incidentally, was the reason I was talking with him in the first place), when he told me I shouldn’t be burdening her with that. He told me that “in a marriage, you should only bring the best of yourself to the table.” Even in that moment, as the words left his mouth and entered my ears, I could feel that it was wrong. I hadn’t committed to only bring the best of myself to the relationship, I had committed to bring all of myself. That was the only time I ever met with him.

I have never been a part of an honest conversation about depression or suicide that is not a soft and slow conversation. There is a depth and a weight to it, it demands to be handled with care and thoughtfulness. From my experience, a call for help is always the smallest cry. By the time someone is crying for help they have come to believe the worst about themselves, they believe they are not worth the burden it would place on someone to ask for help.

It is often said that men are raised to believe they should never be a burden to anyone else, and that is why they don’t talk about their feelings. Being real with someone would be too much of an imposition, and that is not acceptable, so instead we talk about sports or politics or movies, anything we can talk about without ever establishing a real connection. I don’t think that is just a “guy” thing, I think it is a “human” thing. I have known plenty of women who have the same sentiments, it just happens that their conversations are more personal, and they are more adept at dancing around the difficult parts of their lives to paint a picture of a happy, thriving person.

For a while I had a safety plan, meaning that my therapist had me identify people I felt safe and comfortable enough with to knock on their door when I was struggling. The idea was that I would get out of the environment I was in where the dark thoughts were taking hold, and they would know that most of the time I would just need a place to sit and calm down. Statistically, safety plans don’t usually work well, but it did for me. My therapist, the one who initiated the plan, had me go to the guys on my list and talk to them about what was going on.

Those conversations were difficult. They were soft and slow, as I let them know that I was not okay, that I had thoughts of hurting myself, and that I needed their help. The people I chose were very gracious and understanding, showing an amazing amount of support, and they helped me feel safe. I used the plan a couple of time, knocking on doors at night and being invited in. Sometimes they would pull a board game and we would talk while we played. Sometimes we just chatted on the couch. It wasn’t always about what had driven me to knock, it could just be about life in general.

One of them took it further, as well. Occasionally Jesse would ask if I wanted to go for drives with him where we could talk while he ran errands. If he saw me sitting alone at the fire pit in my backyard, he would grab a chair and come sit with me. One of the times we were talking around the fire pit I apologized for laying such a hard thing at his feet, and he stopped me. Instead, he thanked me for trusting him, telling me that he saw it as an honor to be someone I could be this honest with.

I am extremely grateful that he was there for me.

Depression rates in the United States are just above 8% of all adults (according to the National Institute of Mental Health), which means that in a room of 15 people, 2 of them are really struggling. I live in a place that experiences depression at rates above the national average (more than twice the national average, actually, closer to 21%, or 1 in 5 people). The rates are even higher in teens.

We need more people like Jesse, people who see someone struggling and help in a way that doesn’t make them feel like a burden. I have had a lot of support from people, I have people checking in with me, and that is because I decided that I can’t be quiet about it any longer. I have tried to be open about my mental health, knowing that keeping it to myself wasn’t doing anyone any favors. I want to believe that it has helped, that I have created space for someone to feel seen or heard. I hope I have been a force for good, just as my friend was for me in my life.

In order to hear those quiet calls for help, we have to be listening. We have to be around long enough to have soft and slow conversations. We have to be willing to be vulnerable, to be understanding, and to show that we truly care. And we have to be willing to see them for more than what they are fighting.

I had a coworker who stopped by my room after school got out one day just to call me a liar. I had told him that I was okay earlier in the day, and he had seen through it. He told me that he knew I wasn’t okay, then he wrapped me in a hug and told me I didn’t have to be okay, that it was hard to fight, but he would be there to fight with me. An interaction like that does worlds of good for someone who is struggling.

We need more people who see us in our struggles without seeing us as our struggles.

We need people who see others struggling to feel worthy of love, then go out of their way to help that person feel loved.

We need people who see people walking the low strides in their life, and just sit with them in whatever capacity they can.

We need people willing to have soft and slow conversations, ones with enough space to share hard things.

We need people to join the quiet battles they see others fighting.

We need you.