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Smoke Detectors: An Evolutionary Silver Lining Behind Anxiety

As many of you know, and experience regularly, the downsides of mental illness can be exhausting and extremely detrimental to well-being. Many of you have regularly experienced the impossible tasks of arising from bed on a dreary morning, having no escape from an overwhelmingly anxious situation, or containing a dangerous manic state. Obviously, these are not easy occurrences to handle or control. Obviously, mental health issues have plagued enough people where they are worthy of careful observation.

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To gain more knowledge of mental health and its discrepancies, we must ask two questions- “How?” and “Why?”. When we look into modern psychological pathology, the former question seems to dominate the latter. Chemicals, and a lack thereof,  have been most abundantly accepted as the main reason why mental health issues physically exist. When we have an abundance or scarcity of certain chemicals in our system, we experience maladaptive mental symptoms. However, when we ignore the “Why?”, we avoid some of the most important information behind mental health.

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How I Learned Not to Romanticize Mental Illness

Let me set the scene: approximately one in the morning, awake typing at the computer, eyes sliding shut, surrounded by anime posters and photos of my friends taped to the wall, trapped in forums and social media sites. At fifteen, I was your average blunt-bangs-wearing, journal-writing, hanging-out-in-a-graveyard teenage queer girl stereotype.

I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I romanticized mental illness and mental health issues. I longed for an emotionally tortured soul who might be able to accompany me into the late hours of the night, kept awake by insomnia, angry at the world for its discrimination. I ached for someone who I could save – or the other way around – from the trials and traumas that life hands us. With low self-esteem and a deep sense of loss after my mother’s death, I was a mess of Post-Traumatic Martyr Syndrome (that’s not real – it’s my name for how survivors of loss feel the constant need to sacrifice themselves for ‘the greater good’ because they lived and the other person did not) and striped arm warmers courtesy of the mid-2000s.

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Mental Health, Music, and Community: An Interview With Sounds and Tones Records

When I talk about my personal journey with mental health, music is something that is seldom left out. Music was one of the first ways I personified and expressed what I was feeling. It was a way to cope with my depression and anxieties, and a great way to feel like I belonged. It gave me my own microcosm of a community. One that I felt a part of. 

But the scene isn’t always a welcoming place (especially depending on the genre), and different labels and artists can often come under fire for the ways bands and artists portray themselves and what they preach.

Sounds and Tones Records is not one of those labels we have to worry about. 

Article dear hope
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My Mental Illness Is Part of Me, But Not Who I Am

Who are you?

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This is a question that we like to avoid. It may be the question that we are always avoiding. There is so much weight to those three words that you can’t help but feel them hit you as your ears and brain correspond to decipher the message. Sure, there are some out there who could stare straight into your eyes and answer with immediate confidence. But for most of us, the journey to self discovery is one full of trial and error, highs and lows, and years and years of experience.

But for those of us who fight a mental illness, the path to discovery becomes even more complicated. How can we define who we are when we often feel that we are two, separate, distinguishable people?

Does my mental illness define me?

What side of me is the real me?

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Extinguishing the Invisible Fire: Changing the Conversation on College Suicide

Hey everyone.

First off, thanks for welcoming me. I’m so happy to be here. I’ve advocated for mental health for years now after realizing my own struggle and for empathetically stepping into the shoes of those who don’t quite know how to find their voices yet. Paul has done such a wonderful job with these things on Dear Hope. You all have done a wonderful job in fighting your own struggles and doing what you can to find your places and raise awareness. For this, I thank you immensely. Change starts with emotions and ideas. Fires start from sparks. The smallest seeds grow into the largest trees, and  you are all much larger seeds thank you actually think you are. Your potential is endless and I hope that we here at Dear Hope can help you realize that.

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On that totally hopeful and optimistic note, let’s discuss something I’ve dealt with lately-suicide.

Now, the intent of education is not to sugar coat. The world is unfortunately not covered in chocolate frosting. Negative and detrimental issues exist both in our society and on a global scale.

Suicide is one of these issues.

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1 in 4: How I Learned To Be A Survivor (And Learned To Live Again)

This piece comes from an extremely talented writer and close friend and I urge everyone to check out her piece about tragedy, despair, and overcoming mental anguish.

Trigger Warning: Rape, Suicide.

I still think about the day that I was taking a walk with my dad in early spring, and we were talking about rape. I remember saying, “I would definitely kill myself if I was ever raped. I don’t think I would want to live through that. It’s probably the only reason I would ever actually commit suicide.”

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It was a heavy topic for a nice leisurely stroll, but we were talking about a recent story in the media and had veered off into personal examples of people we knew that were rape survivors. I knew people survived all kinds of sad, traumatic experiences – cancer, loss of loved ones, car crashes, physical violence, child abuse – and I’ve gone through a lot myself. I lost my mom unexpectedly when I was eleven, and I lost one of my best friends to a car accident when I was eighteen. I came out as bisexual in middle school and went through a long period of intense bullying. But for some reason, I couldn’t shake the idea of rape as being the most horrible thing for a person to have to live with.

This was a couple years before the night that changed my life. I attended a college party at UMass Dartmouth with a friend, where others drank but I didn’t, and where I knew a couple people but not everyone. It was my first experience spending significant time at the school. When I woke up the next day, I realized I had been drugged during the night. I woke up in the afternoon, groggy and confused, and I knew then that I had to make a decision.

I had been raped. But I didn’t know if I wanted to make good on that promise to myself: to end my life if I became a survivor. I only knew one thing. I didn’t want to survive.

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Dreamless/Sleepless: Does Dreaming Encourage Sleeping?

Dreams have always been an interesting concept to me, mostly because I never remember mine. Sometimes I wish I did, but than again I don’t remember nightmares either. I like to think that my mind is so busy during the day because it never exercises itself while I’m asleep. It just goes to show that dreamers of the day are dangerous men.

I can admit I think too much for my own good. So much so that it keeps me up most nights. Every time I lie down it’s a battle just to silence myself. I want to believe it’s because I don’t dream. I can’t dream. I don’t know how. It’s difficult for me to accept that one moment I’ll be lying in bed trying to sleep and before I know it I’m waking up. Like no time has passed at all. Without dreams to bridge the sleep it becomes meaningless.

It becomes nothing.

Why would my brain want to stop working?

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Overbooked: Help Put On Hold

Trigger Warning For Suicide Discussion:

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This is it.

It would be this easy to end it.

It would be this easy to take a life. 

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He stood against the cold metal looking straight ahead into the scarce clouds that dotted the city skyline. The sounds of engines combusting gasoline and turning pistons filled in the gaps behind him that reflected the back of his eyes with imagery. But this what just background noise.

Feedback.

Static.

Just like his mind on a constant basis.

He slowly looked down to the waters below. It was so far down. Is this what I truly want? He fought back to look in his mind for any reason not to step forward the six inches between life and death. But he found none. He heard footsteps of people walking down the sidewalk on the side of the bridge. But no one stopped. No one asked.

No one cared.

His eyes began to water as the breeze from the river brushed into his reaming emotions. How did it come to this? How did it come to the point where he wanted to die? Where each day he went to sleep hoping he wouldn’t wake up?

Article Creative Pieces dear hope
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Insomnia: I Had A Dream I Fell Asleep

My entire body is heavy.

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My eyelids blink with the consistency of a frozen stream. The entire room is an object in motion with the lowest shutter speed from a camera a few decades old, rusted through the dust that collects on the outside of my pupils. I roll over in an attempt to make myself more comfortable.

3:40 A.M reads the clock on my bedside.

I sigh and roll back over, throwing my arm over my forehead with my palm facing upwards.

It’s been two weeks of this. Going on three. Why can’t I sleep? Please God let me sleep.

I’m tired but the sleep won’t find me. I remain invisible to the dust that needs to fall on my eyelids. It’s like I don’t exist. The rest of the world is asleep and here I am,

Awake.

Alone.

With only my thoughts.

Article dear hope Insomnia
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A Phone Call To Connecticut, A Phone Call From Idaho

Last fall, I called a friend who I hadn’t spoken to in a long time and got the following response:

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“Paul if I don’t change something, I’m not going to survive winter. 

I’m going to kill myself.”

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Struck by the suddenness of his words that pierced my ear that the phone was pressed against, I responded the only way I could. With empathy and full attention.

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I knew this friend had been struggling for a long time, we had been friends for years. Our struggles united us, and we had many talks through our friendship of existentialist questions filled with identity and purpose. But it had never been had real as this.

It had never been as scary as this. 

Article dear hope