About, for and to Moonchildren, everywhere, anywhere. All the time, anytime. I.L.U.
tisdag 29 november 2011
I looked at you, and all I saw was colors oh, so beautiful
"Those elements were ejected into space by the force of the massive explosion, where they mixed with other matter and formed new stars, some with planets such as earth. That's why the earth is rich in these heavy elements. The iron in our blood and the calcium in our bones were all forged in such stars.
Depressions are so hard to talk about, but it’s also so important. There are so many different kinds of depressions, and everything is not a depression. Sometimes we just feel very low.
This is a part of an article about feeling down and being depressed from a site called UMO* that I translated:
“If you feel down for weeks, and also lose your interest for things you use to like, sleep too little or too much, have troubles concentrating, lose appetite, eat more than usual or get easily annoyed, you might need help to feel better. That also applies if you for example lose self-confidence and become self-critical, withdraw from people, spend much time pondering, get problems in school or in work, or receive suicidal thoughts. Then it might have become a depression, and then help from someone professional is needed. To be in a depression is something more than to be temporarily sad and down.”
*UMO is a Swedish national web-based youth friendly clinic for young people aged 13 to 25 years.
I’m going to talk about feeling the need to run away.
Maybe some people would consider me the wrong person to talk about things like this. I’ve never been really suicidal, and the thoughts I’ve had when I’ve been the most down, I want to keep to myself, as I consider them private.
But no matter if it made it to a depression or if it just was a period of feeling very down, it’s very, very though to get through. I’ve been through this so many times, I’ve felt like I was a prisoner, felt like I couldn’t do what I wanted to do, I’ve felt like I didn’t belong, felt like I’ve been with people I don’t like because I had to, I’ve felt like the pressure from school is too high that I’ve believed that I’m not enough, I’ve felt like I’ve done things just because I had to, etc, etc…
The last time I felt this way I listened to this song every day.
When I listened to it, I felt like it was the only one who understood how I was feeling (and now I realize how crazy it sounds but yes. I didn’t feel like any person could feel like I did, but this song understood me.) and I felt like it was supporting me.
The last time I felt this way was last week.
I’ve lost count how many times I’ve felt this way.
And I know so, so many people who’ve felt the same way.
Still, I, and so, so many others feel like no one would understand.
“I’ll have to swallow” is the line I guess I relate the most to. Every day I went to school, I felt like I had to put on a smile, pretend everything was fine and that resulted in that I received that horrible feeling of not being myself. I thought, either I did that or I’d be questioned for why I was so down.
I “knew” I wouldn’t be able to go through that second option.
Not always, but very often when I feel down, this happens. I don’t want to show people how I am feeling because I feel that I shouldn’t feel down. There’s something in me, telling me I shouldn’t complain just because I feel stressed. Or just because I feel lonely. Or just because I feel like I am not really living my life.
What.
Everyone, every single person, feels down times to times.
I am not alone with it.
You are not alone with it.
They are not alone with it.
And we all have the same right to feel down. I even think that we need to feel down sometimes. To quote Patrick Wolf: “if it’s never dark, well how you gonna know the sun, when it shines?”
It’s hard though. When you are in that dark tunnel it’s hard to believe there is a light at the end of it. Many times, you know it’s there, but you just feel like it’s impossible to reach it.
I often feel like the solution is to run away.
Not always in precise meaning, mostly it’s about locking myself in inside me. Isolating the world with music and just thinking and thinking and thinking. If people would ask me how I was feeling, I would probably just tell them I’m fine.
Sometimes the need to escape really gets so strong I want to run away. I never know where, just that I need to get out of where I am.
I’m not always sure of what I am escaping from either. Sometimes I am sure: I need to get of out where I am because the world we live in is too stressful to me. Sometimes I feel like I am a burden to other people that, if I’d run away, I’d do them a favour.
Listening to music like the song “Headache” won’t really help you. It helps you feel less lonely, but after some time, songs like this will only “support” your dark side. Doesn’t matter how good the song is, if it makes you feel stronger about feeling down, you shouldn’t continue listen to the song when you want to get out.
What I mean is, don’t listen to a song where someone sings “I’m not enough” when you are trying to get away from thinking that way.
Cry a river, build a bridge and get over it.
I think we all have our own ways of getting out of depressions, our own ways of finding Our Light again. With Our Light, I mean our own Hope.
I believe hope is always inside us, that we just need to take care of it for it to bloom.
Let out your feelings.
I don’t think it’s healthy to keep your feelings inside. Cry if you need to cry.
I think people who show their feelings are brave. Don’t You?
We all have different ways of getting better.
Some tell you to work out, to run, to move your body.
Why not dance out the darkness?
Some tell you to eat right, sleep right and I remember Kerli has said you should drink a lot of water.
Spend time in your favourite place, spend time outdoors, spend time with people you love. Listen to music.
The most important thing to do, is to believe that better days will come.
Here is a link to The Moonchild Chronicles’ post about “Dealing with loneliness, depression, etc.” which I think is a very well written text by Moonchild Lilly. The Moonchild Chronicles are Moonchild lessons about what a Moonchild is and how they should act. You can also send in questions that Lilly will answer:)
Let’s collect hope!
I almost always force myself to listen to hopeful music when I feel down. Sometimes it makes you realize things that you are too blind to see when you’re in the darkness.
So I’ve had this idea for a while now, to make a playlist on Spotify with YOU filled with music that brings YOU hope. I’ve made a collaborative playlist so that anyone can add their songs, all you need is a Spotify account:)
First note: WHAT IS SPOTIFY? “Millions of tracks, any time you like. Just search for it in Spotify, then play it. Just help yourself to whatever you want, whenever you want it.”
It’s free to get a Spotify account (READ SECOND NOTE!). You create an account and download and install. It’s really easy and don’t worry – it’s safe:)
Second note: Spotify can’t be used in all countries. Here are the available countries:
“Spotify is available for free in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, the US (invitation-only beta from July 2011), France, Spain and The Netherlands. Users in Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Switzerland can use Spotify, but only under the Premium service.”
All you do, (after you’ve created an account) is to press the subscribe button under the name of the playlist. Then it will be added in a list to your left and you can search for songs and drag them to the playlist.
I haven’t updated this blog for months. So much happened in my life… But now I will have another go with this.
So. This what you will read next is about something that happened to me this summer, the 9th of July.
That’s a long time ago, I know.
But it all made me think.
I wrote this months ago, but never got to post it here. But yes, I’m having a new go.
“I never was afraid of the dark. Then I met darkness.
I was waiting for the bus arriving in half an hour with two friends. It was 22.30 and we were in a bus cabin, talking about just everything.
Suddenly this guy, around 20 years, comes to us. His balance wasn’t very good, so we figured he was drunk. He asked us how he could get to the trains with a bus leaving as soon as possible. Before we had listed up the buses for him he interrupted and told us he needed to help his’ ex-girlfriend from the club. He said she usually got very drunk and he didn’t want her to walk home alone, as she’d probably get raped.
He missed two buses cause he didn’t want to run to them. Now it was a 15 minutes before the next bus going to the trains would arrive, so he sat down and talked to us.
It didn’t take long until we realized something was wrong. He told us he had broken into a rapist’s house last week, that he had crushed a window and cut himself on the glass. He showed us the wound on his wrist. And he started going on and on about that men who attacked women totally had lost all respect. I can agree with that.
Then a bus came that he could take.
He ran in front of the bus to stop it. He said “They always stop”, and that if he’d die, it wouldn’t matter cause he’d lost so many people.
I can not tell everything he said, cause I don’t know what was true, and if what he said was true, then people could get hurt if they saw this blogpost. But I can say this.
The bus driver didn’t let him on the bus cause he was too drunk and seemed violent as he had stopped the bus by standing in front of it. So this guy came back to us. With a really frightening smile on his’ lips.
Then he asked us if we knew a guy called -. We didn’t. And he told us who that person was. I can not write here who… But I can say this. It made me afraid of the dark that night.
He told us that he would tell this person to shoot the head off the bus driver.
He sat down beside me and I felt very scared. Then another man, nearly 30 years, came to the bus cabin to check what time his bus would arrive. And he asked us how he could send a “text message ticket” (in Sweden around Stockholm you can’t pay with money on the bus, so if you don’t have a ticket, you can send a text message to the bus company and get a reply that is your ticket) and to what number. Me and my friends told him what to send and to what number. But then the drunken guy tried to interrupt us and tell the man another number. Luckily the man didn’t listen to him; he thanked us and got out of the cabin.
Now the drunken guy told us that we shouldn’t have given that man the right number. “What if he would take the same bus as you?” “Always give the wrong number, so people like him won’t get on the bus.” And the reason was: he could be a rapist.
He said:
“Look at him. He doesn’t look very cool.”
That man looked like a happy man. I didn’t understand what this guy meant.
It was as if he couldn’t see the difference between a threatening man and an innocent man.
I just prayed to God that this guy’s bus would come sooner.
When two ~18-year-old boys passed the street and walked towards our cabin, the guy mumbled “Now someone’s coming…” and grabbed his pocket as if he had something in it.
As he didn’t take anything out I can’t tell what, but after everything he’d told us my first thought was “He’s going to stab them with a knife if they come closer”.
The two boys didn’t come closer. And the guy didn’t stab anyone.
He talked some more about rapists and his hate towards them… He told us once again he needed to help his ex from the club. Then, finally, his bus came and me and my friends just went “Oh, please let him on the bus!” and the bus took off, with him on it.
Yes, I could breathe out.
I didn’t need to be scared for my sake at all, as I am a girl.
But I didn’t breathe out.
I thought of the bus driver. I thought “What if he was serious? What if he will tell that guy to shoot the bus driver?” and now the hurtful part for my sake; “Could I have done something to stop him?”
It took two days until I realized I had to drop those thoughts.
What’s happened has happened.
And he was drunk.
But if anything like this would happen again, I want to remember that Kerli quote:
“Hate breeds hate. Love breeds love. Be love.”, and I want to try to explain this to that person.
”
When I heard what had happened on Utøyain Norway I just…
I seriously still don’t have any words for it. It broke my heart.
All my love to the ones involved with that tragedy.
We need to make a difference.
We have to start with ourselves.
Let’s start a Love Revolution
Do you know what really cheers people up?
A smile.
How simple a smile seems, but still… Really.
I don’t even know how many times a smile from a stranger have cheered me up.
My favourite memory is from this one time when I was really sad. I waited for the bus to pick me up. When the bus came, two older boys who I didn’t know stepped in front of me and got on the bus before me, almost pushed me aside, even though I’d been standing there. I was so sad that I didn’t even care. But when I got on the bus I felt that the bus driver looked at me. So I looked back and he smiled kindly to me and said hi. That made my day.
If you don’t do it already, try one day. When you feel happy, just share your happiness by smiling against people. If someone looks strange at you, don’t even bother. You’re just trying to make the world a better place.
Secret Moonchild
Of course a smile isn’t always enough. But it is definitely something! :):) Actually I started thinking of Secret Moonchild when I was writing this blogpost. Secret Moonchild is an inspiring moonchild who tweets tips and gives you challenges and a lot of wise words! So check out and follow @SecretMoonchild on http://twitter.com/#!/SecretMoonchild.
