“And I'm the only thing that's standing in my way yall
But I gotta be with me, it's no escape yall
I guess depression just stepped in, and took over shit like it's known to do
Guess it said, hey Joe, I'm going home with you
Turn your phone off, I need to be alone with you
I need to be in the zone with you
Cuz I'm the only thing you've grown to, nigga
Look, I OWN you, nigga
Been with you since 10, but you starting to confuse me
Cause it's been so long and you still tryna lose me
Like how could you show me such cruelty??
When everybody turns their back on you, Joe it's you and me
Still you don't want me to see you right
And why you always come get me, how we re-unite
I know you feel for me deep in your heart
Doctors, meetings, pills couldn't keep us apart
Now you got a deal and you wanna get rid of me
We’re roommates, I'm in your head, Joe you live with me
So I don't write for the fans, nah, I write to my man
And hope that he'll just leave and understand
Like, like please leave the kid in peace
Let me smoke this one cig in peace
Just leave for a second, man it's been too long, and I can't troop it
But as long as you around I can't make that dance music” - Joe Budden
I was going to try to put all my feelings in words but that would take far too long and I believe those lyrics pretty much summed it all up. Obviously not too many people I know deal with it but it’s a serious disease of the mind. I go through some form of this shit every single day. Some days I wake up and simply don't feel like being bothered with anyone at all, then sometimes I can be in a rather pleasant mood for the entire day and someone will do something so minor and it’ll set it all off. It's literally like having an alter ego, I have no clue who will show up the next day. Today, it might be the person that most people have grown to know and love but tomorrow I could easily be the person they utterly despise. What makes it worse is that me, being the logical person I am, decided to try and figure a way around it but that was to no avail. I figured drugs would help but that just made it worse because it turns out that apparently I’m a textbook addict too. The drugs just create an illusion for the mind to cling to for awhile but eventually that goes away and reality kicks back in which is precisely why I’ve never seen a shrink. “I’d feel less if I drugged myself up with antidepressants, but in essence I’m threatening my character assessment.” Where’s the value of life if you have to walk around in a zombie-like state just to cope with it? But being an addict, I lost track of why I was even doing the drugs in the first damn place and became overwhelmed with all the fun I was having and the chaos that I would create. I remember once looking back through all of my facebook statuses dating back over a year and I could literally distinguish every single time I was high just by the subject matter and the way I presented it. So I guess being an addict is really the scary thing here because we’ve seen over and over again the type of devastation it can cause and others around you are forced to basically sit back and watch your steady and inevitable decline. I truly hope I don’t go out like that and I don’t think I will because I wholeheartedly believe I’ve learned my lesson as far as that’s concerned. Looking back and realizing you were doing enough drugs at one time EVERYDAY to kill an average person will put things into perspective but it also made me realize that a lot of it’s mental. Think about it, in the 90’s people took GHB and rohypnol, the date rape drugs, recreationally because it supposedly produced effects somewhat similar to what ecstasy does nowadays. Now what that says to me is that mentally preparing yourself for it allows for a different effect as opposed to having it slipped in your drink and unknowingly taking it. So I think that, that in itself is the best medication, to just mentally prepare and embrace it all. Im ok with the depression enough to know that it’s certainly not ideal but it does have its upsides and that’s why I love those lyrics because he understands how much pain it causes but at the end he realizes it’s also what causes him to be so creative and passionate in his music. That was especially refreshing to me because I used to look at it as a bad side effect of being gifted but actually I think being gifted is a good side effect of the disease. As much as I hate dealing with it, I do enjoy having an abnormally high IQ haha but a stipulation of being gifted is that you have to be equipped to live with all the critics. People constantly criticize me for being so negative about things and letting the stupid shit affect me like it does and normally it wouldn’t bother me at all but some act as if I do it on purpose so theoretically I should be able to just up and change it if I wanted to and that’s what upsets me. Honestly, who the fuck would knowingly choose live their life like this? My mind becomes encompassed with terrible thoughts and there’s no way of getting rid of them other than finding something else to think about and it’s usually not too much better but at the same time the replacement thoughts are certainly not as dark. I can tell you that there have been so many times when I wished I could just be like everyone else for at least a brief moment and have the ability to feel the entire spectrum of emotions , but at same time I’ve been in too many situations where it helped because bad things didn’t affect me like they affect normal people. What’s pitiful is that I find myself too often just going through the motions when it comes time to show emotion. Death doesn’t make me too sad, sure I feel for the families but I guess with me, I’ve personally dealt with it so much that it no longer poses to be that wake up call for me that it is for everyone else. That’s just simple psychology, a person dies and the people that know them are forced to take a step back and analyze their own mortality and then you get all the cliché sayings that go with it. I guess this is somewhat fitting since for all of us that went to high school together, we just lost one of our own and while everyone else is busy being flooded with emotion , I’m just sort of sitting there in amazement and disbelief. Of course it’s undoubtedly tragic, I’m not denying that for a second, but I’m more in awe at the ignorant value of life that living gets. Are you suddenly reminded of how valuable it is only when someone you know dies? What kind of thinking is that? Maybe it’s different for ordinary people but for me, a person who often wishes he had other people’s lives, I fully understand how valuable it is because I live everyday with the thoughts of how terrible my mind perceives mine to be but I always keep in mind the simple fact that it could be worse. But enough with all of my rambling, I just said that to say this; I decided to become a student of the mind when I realized I was becoming a prisoner of it and all I wanted was to mastermind an escape route but I ended up falling in love with all of the things I learned in the process. I've studied people for damn near my whole life so I know what makes them tick and while I'm one of those people who thinks ten steps ahead, I can also see your moves ten steps in advance. Hell I can figure you out in a heartbeat and manipulate the living hell outta you if I so choose to but that would only end up making things worse in the long run, and trust me, I've already thought it through hehe. So throughout it all, it’s given me an ability to see the world in a much different light than most people can and while I know now that I’ll never escape, I guess the best thing to do would be to use that knowledge for good and try to provide insight to anyone who’s willing to listen and take my advice.
“Depression tells me I suck, but I replied ‘I aint here cuz I fell down, im here cuz I got UP!’”
