May Music Favourites 2015

So I haven't done one of these for a while and I thought I would tell you what tracks I loved this month. I'm trying to distance from writing about artists in huge chunks and cutting the long story short and recommending you some tracks that I am enjoying this month. SO here we go, here were my five favourite tracks for the month May. To find more of what I have been listening too this month you can find a link to my Spotify playlist at the bottom of this blog post!

1. T-Shirt Weather - Circa Waves

This track by Circa Waves is going to be my song of the summer by far. It really encapsulates that feeling of hanging out in the sunshine with this track on loudly. As you may or may not know I now do Drive at Five on Chelmsford Community Radio and have to make sure that this is shoved into my first hour as I feel like it's a real mood booster. This goes into the playlist because it will be the ultimate track of the summer this year! I'm yet to hear anything else from this band but this song is a rather pleasant listen.

2. Zombie - Jamie T

Admittedly when I first heard this track on the radio I hated it but after hearing it multiple times it has really grown on me. It's an interesting little track and really makes you want to dance like an idiot along to it, that might just be me actually...

I don't hear this one being played on the radio much anymore but it was definitely one that I have listened to multiple times this months, purposely searching for it, instead of it just appearing in a spotify playlist, although it's always welcome if it does appear in a playlist!

3. I Found - Amber Run

This track was this months freebie from Starbucks and I picked it up as it was described as "haunting songwriting" and you know how much I adore singer/songwriters. This band sounds like a mix between Ben Howard, James Bay and to a degree Mumford and Sons. I'm not saying they sound LIKE those artists but they have elements that are very similar and it creates that "haunting songwriting" that it was described as. I have really enjoyed listening to this band and expect big things for them in the future! They are a must play this month!

4. Love Is Not Control - To Kill A King

I have been loving To Kill A King this month. I'm a huge fan of their stuff as it is but I have been obsessed with Love Is Not Control and their other song Choices this month. Love is Not Control is I believe the boys latest track and I have had it on repeat quite a lot this month. To Kill a King have a really nice dark edge to their music and I really enjoy listening to them. They might not be for everyone but give them a listen!

5. Hold My Hand - Jess Glynne 

Jess Glynne is the voice behind numerous Clean Bandit tracks but when this song was released I was a little unsure if she could hold her own ground with her own music. But this track is incredible! Jess has an incredible voice and is definitely going into my summer playlist of things to listen to in the sunshine. I was a huge fan of her music with Clean Bandit and I'm so glad that she has released some music of her own and still done exceptionally well. I cannot wait to hear more from in the future!

To keep up to date on my favourite tracks you can follow my spotify playlist for this month here: May Favourites Playlist

Dear Robin Williams

This is a long time over due and in some ways writing a letter to a dead person feels like a little bit of a weird thing to do. But I wanted to do it anyway, regardless of the fact you will never read this. I think about you and your death a lot, probably more than what's considered normal but every now and again you will stumble your way back into my mind and it makes me sad that our world is no longer graced with your presence.

I grew up watching your films as a child and still hold the memories very close to my heart. Admittedly I don't really think we have much in common but the one thing we do is the one thing that killed you. It's hard to think that depression was the reason you are no longer with us because you were such a funny man who clearly hid his pain so well. I know how hard it is to mask that depression and some times that makes me realise how strong we both were and are during these times. It's not easy to pretend to be happy, to hide our pain and suffering from people so that they never had to know.

The stigma surrounding our illness is a terrible one. In a way it's quite like quicksand, once you start reading it you begin to get sucked in until you feel trapped with all the thoughts from other people who tell you that you are "crazy" or a "psychopath" and that we are all just one big inconvenience to the rest of the world. And once those seeds have been planted into our brains it's hard to differentiate between the weeds and the flowers.

I hate thinking about how you died because it makes me extremely sad to think about a man loved by so many for his happiness and humor to have suffered in the way that you did. I know the level of depression it takes to feel suicidal. I know how scary that is and how difficult it is to imagine ever being able to escape from the dark hole that you are trapped in. I could not even begin to imagine how that last push of depression feels to actually take your own life.

I'm so very sorry that you didn't feel as though you had anyone around that you could talk to and anybody to confide in and seek help. I am so sorry that the world we live in made you feel that way, because the stigma of a grown man asking for help with mental health problems gets you laughed at and belittled because of the illness. We horribly live in a world where only 17% of men feel brave enough to speak about what they are going through because of that stigma. In England men are more than three times more likely than women to commit suicide which is a scary statistic.

I sometimes don't understand why the world has such negative views on mental health and that there is so much stigma surrounding our illness. I hate that at 19 years old I already know that I am going to live a life where people treat me differently because of my mental illnesses and that I will continue to see the stigma for the rest of my life. I don't understand the stigma because, you know as much as I do that we are "normal" people too, that we can function like everyone else, it's just that sometimes we just need a little extra care and support. I don't understand why people have such horrible views on our illness and I think it's all down to the past when people were considered psychotic and were treated horribly for their illness. For generations that stigma was passed down and I want to see a world where that stigma is broken, which will take so much work but I am determined to see it done.

I think a lot about your final moments, the extreme feelings that you were having and the fact that you thought the world would be better without you. I have had times where I have sat and cried just thinking about that because I know how terrible you must have been feeling and how terrifying those feelings actually are. I've come close to suicide more times than I would like to admit and as weird as it sounds I think you were incredibly brave to make that final move. It's not an easy move to make and it takes extreme bravery to actually do it.

It's been a while since you passed away and although we still live in a world with so much stigma surrounding mental health issues, your death did incredibly in raising awareness for depression. Many people begun to take the illness seriously and realised that we aren't completely crazy. People were moved by our death because you had touched so many hearts in this world. I want to thank you for all the times that you have made me smile and laugh and I also want to thank you for the awareness you brought to depression. It was a shame that it took the loss of such a great man to have it taken seriously but it is changing the world, slowly but surely.

Lots of Love,
Rebecca
xxx

An Honest Chat...

I didn't know if I wanted to write this but I decided that it might help someone out there realise they are not alone. So I've been started on new meds called quetiapine and it's been intensifying a lot of my mental health symptoms and bringing on some of the rare ones that I don't see that often. Somethings I say sound stupid and funny but when you are living with it they can be terrifying and before you read this I want you to know that as much as you want to maybe laugh at some of these symptoms, please consider having to experience it yourself and decide if it's still funny to you.

So as I said in my previous blog post I've been suffering with things like Paranoia, Panic Attacks and Anxiety and bad voices for the past month and all of these have been intensified with these meds so I'm feeling them so much more extremely than before. I've also been having bad suicidal thoughts and at the beginning of the week was terrified to leave my room because I couldn't trust myself to not do it and ended up not leaving the house by myself until Friday. It begun to get extremely bad on Friday evening when we went into town and I stood 8 floors up in a multi story car park, looking down at the pavement below. It was a weird battle that I had with myself as I stood there because that was the most ready to do it I have ever been.

Before the thoughts of my family and my own willpower and fear of death had stopped me from going through with it, but as I stood there looking down at the world continuing on without me I internally battled with myself about whether or not I was going to do it. I knew my mum and sister would be walking past a couple of minutes later and for the first time ever that didn't bother me and I wasn't worried about it (which I feel so guilty for saying). The thing that did stop me doing it was the fact my dad kept talking to me, he didn't know what I was going through in my mind but he didn't stop to the point where it was frustrating me and I was thinking 'I wish he'd be quite so I could do this'. I hate that even still now I regret that I didn't do it and my brain is still telling me that my family would be better off without me around.

Another side affect to these new meds is that I have NO control on what I am saying or doing. It's like looking after a small child that won't do what it's told and it is really hard work to deal with and so upsetting when you say and do things that you would otherwise not do but you can't stop it happening. I'm starting to gain control of my speech back a little but it's been really difficult having all my thoughts just pouring straight out of my mouth and even things that I don't want to say. It's been like that horrible voice in my head has been controlling my speech and it has said things that I really didn't mean or want to say. It's been so devastating.

I've also been hallucinating and hearing things a lot this week. It started probably on Tuesday when I was trying to go to sleep and I thought I could hear my mum desperately calling my name at me and it got so scary to the point where the paranoia had me thinking that I wasn't actually alive or awake and life was happening without me. I spent an hour or so hearing my mum sort of screaming my name at me and I was convinced I was in a coma and they were trying to wake me up and it was so so scary and even now I am dealing with the paranoia that is trying to tell me that this is all not real.

With the hallucinations I've been seeing things that haven't been there, from things like spiders to being convinced the dog was talking to me. It might sound funny but when you are seeing things that aren't actually there but you think are it is incredibly terrifying. There's been so many times where I've closed my eyes really tight hoping that I would wake up from a horrible dream. It's been so scary that my brain has had this control over me to the point where I thought things were happening and things where there that aren't actually. People who haven't ever experienced this I don't expect them to understand but it's so difficult trying to decide what is "real" and what isn't. I've been living double checking everything to see if it's actually there or it's just my  brain playing tricks on me.

The paranoia has continued to grow and get worse this week. When I get super poorly I feel numb and it makes me think heavily about my emotions and I become paranoid that I don't actually know what emotions feel like and that all is numb constantly. I don't know if I truly know what love "feels" like because I can't think of a time where I have "felt" so full of love. Then I forget about how it feels to be happy and I become more and more paranoid that all I know is this numbness and I've never managed to feel "normal" emotions.

I've also had very little memory of the past week.I feel like all the bad mental health problems have stuck in there but anything else has just been thrown away and it is extremely terrifying to wake up and not remember what you did yesterday or what I was doing an hour ago. I can recall very very little of my week and that is so scary to me.

I'll maybe expand on this sooner or later but until then I hope you are all well.
Rebecca
xxx

A Life With My Brain

I try not to think about the long term aspect of my illness very much. It's especially hard to think about when I'm feeling low. At 19 years old people say "I have my whole life ahead of me" and in someways that is thrilling and exciting and I can't wait for the big adventure of it all. But in others I look at it in a cold and terrifying light.

I've been suffering with mental health issues for my whole life and yes I know to a degree how to "cope" and handle it all. But I try not to think about how my whole life is going to be dependent on medication just to keep me on a steady-ish path. My lowest of times can be extremely difficult and even looking back on them and thinking about my future terrifies me that I'm always going to have those times.

I was talking to mum earlier about how when my medication finally is the correct bunch that I can live my life fairly normally. But the thought of always never fully getting better is the scariest thing I face. I have a future ahead of me where ups and downs are going to be there. I'm always going to have these illnesses that mess with my life and that's never going to go away and I'm never going to get that chance to be a "normal" human being.

With my mental illnesses there is no glimmer of hope of a recovery. There's no chance that I'm miracle-y going to wake up one day and not have to go through all I do. At and 19 years old that is a really scary prospect to me. I'm so frightened that I'm not going to be able to live my life because I am caged in by the things that are holding me back and my continued dependency on medication just to get me out of bed in the morning and to go to sleep at night.

These thoughts can be pretty tough as it is but when you're extremely low and suicidal as it is, it's hard not to consider just giving up now instead of trying to fight it for the rest of my life. I look at it all and think that it might be easier just to surrender now and not have to live with this for the rest of my life. I'm not happy and I live a life in constant fear of everything going on in my brain. For the rest of my life I will have to live with a brain that is always against me and that is some very difficult information to swallow.

Rebecca
xxx

"I'm Not Crazy"

A big misconception with mental illness is that we are completely crazy and have no control over ourselves. That's so upsetting to me because as a young adult with my illness it's hard to try and convince people that those stereotypes are far from true. It's even worse when you are extremely poorly to convince even yourselves that these things are false!

I've been suffering badly with that last part for just over a week now and it's down to two things that are contributing to this. Part one is the paranoia. When I am extremely poorly with my mental health issues then the paranoia begins. It scares the hell out of me when this begins because I have no form of moral reasoning. I might be able to realise that my thoughts are irrational (or so I would like to believe) but at the time I can work myself into a panicking mess.

It can be really difficult to discuss with people because they just find it stupid and funny but to me it is eating me from the inside out. I've had a couple of things that have made me extremely paranoid and destroyed my well being and day to day life for the past week. The main one is that I was completely convinced that my parents were watching me with webcams whilst they were at work. I know how stupid that sounds now but on Monday I was sat curled up in my bed, "hiding" and sobbing out of pure fear. It's horrible and debilitating and I hate feeling like I can't even trust my own family.

Another thing that likes to appear again when I am extremely low is irrational thoughts/voices. For YEARS my doctors have refused to accept that as voices until fairly recently and it was extremely difficult to make sense of it all. Because the doctors refused to acknowledge that it was voices I spent months after months of feeling like I was completely loosing the plot and it was scary. I thought I was completely crazy and making it all up. But I've realised fairly recently that I'm not making it all up, it is in fact a symptom of my illness.

The voices are terrifying and I find it difficult to talk to about but also lost and abandoned when it is happening. These voices in the past have told me to kill myself, nearly helped me take my own life and are a frequent source of emotional abuse in my head. I hate that even writing that and reading it back makes me scared to talk about it because of the backlash I could get and the stigma that surrounds it. These voices tell me that I'm making it all up, that I'm lying to the ones I love and that no one will ever love me and this can be so hard to cope with. It begins to make me doubt everything and even though I know I'm not making it up it can be hard to logically think it through in times like that.

I still debate whether I should share this as I'm scared about what people might think about me and I find it difficult to talk about it out loud as it is. But I am determined to help break the stigma of mental health issues and so I feel like I should talk about things that might seem too "taboo" to talk to. Hopefully I will get to see a world where mental health stigma no longer exists.

Rebecca
xxx