Click Play

I curl my legs under myself, reaching over the nightstand to pick up my earbuds. I tuck them into my ears and the plug clicks into the socket. Then I click play.

Teenage-hood is like a different realm of existence. Everything feels so vivid and in-your-face. The whole world rests on menial things and the smallest incident can ruin you.

For me, it was no different, except that those menial things became life and death, and those smallest incidences became what defined my future.

Those years are still close behind me. I’m just only turning 20 now. Everything’s still fresh in my mind, and it all still hurts so bad. I went through a lot between the ages of 11 and 18 and that shaped me into the woman I am today.

So plug-in those earbuds, close your eyes, and click play.

King of Anything by Sara Bareilles

Imagine yourself sitting in a classroom. The lesson hadn’t started yet. The teacher wasn’t there. And the boys to the right of you were teasing and laughing at you. They were trying to get you to talk to them, but your voice caught in your throat and you couldn’t even tell them off.

How would that make you feel?

Helpless? Alone? Scared? Hurt? Frustrated?

That’s exactly how it made me feel.

I have selective mutism, and so sometimes, like at school, or out in public, I can’t speak. It’s not something I can control, and it’s not something that most people know about or can easily understand. At the time of this incident, I didn’t even know I had it. I got diagnosed later that summer.

I wanted to yell at those boys when they did that, at the girls too when they did similar things, but I couldn’t. And a part of it was the selective mutism, but even if that weren’t an issue, I still wonder if I would’ve said anything.

Because I was afraid.

I didn’t have a lot to lose at that time, but what I did have meant everything to me. Those tiny brief connections with people I rarely ever got to experience made me the happiest in the world. I wasn’t going to risk losing that. Not for anything.

And so even if I could physically speak up for myself, I didn’t.

I took my own opinions and I shredded them, dissolved them in acid, and watched them turn to ash in flames so that no one would ever have a reason not to like me. I was an empty husk, letting the people around me fill me up with their beliefs and their opinions. And I thought it made me happy.

It didn’t.

This song woke me up. When I listened to those lyrics, “Who cares if you disagree? You are not me,” it made me remember that I was a person too, that my opinions mattered too, that I didn’t have to care what others thought of me.

I took matters into my own hands and decided to stop letting other people fill up my head. I was going to forge my own opinions on every topic imaginable and make my own beliefs. And so I did. It wasn’t easy, and it was hard work, but I kept trying, and I made it to where I am today, still fighting, still struggling, but far beyond where I started.

Lost Boy by Ruth B

I stared down at my hands. They were pale and small and cold. They didn’t feel like my hands. They didn’t feel real. But it was those hands that shut off all the lights and opened the blinds, those hands that picked up my earbuds and placed them in my ears, those hands that opened up Spotify and scrolled to my sad songs playlist, and it was those hands that wiped away the tears that came streaming down my cheeks.

I experienced my first encounter with depression when I was eleven, and ever since then she never left.

I didn’t have friends, couldn’t confide in family. I was truly, entirely, alone. All I had was my depression, my sorrow, and my pain.

We’re old friends, depression and I

We fight all the time over petty little things

Sometimes we cuddle up on cushions of blood and pain together

She gets me like no one else does

Because she was there every step of the way

Unlike everyone I loved

I often ran away from reality into alternate worlds I created inside of my head. I made up stories and lived them out as though they were real. I pretended I had special powers and that people were coming after me because that was the only scenario I could imagine where someone might actually want me.

This song spoke to me. It was as though someone had taken my life and put it into song. And as I sat in the dark, looking out at the moon that was my only friend, this song made me feel like maybe I wasn’t so alone after all.

Liar by The Arcadian Wild

Sometimes, I feel like I’m crazy. Sometimes, I think I am.

Mental illness isn’t an easy thing to live with.

You feel like no one will ever understand you, so you hide your symptoms and pretend to be someone you’re not. You disappear behind walls of stone to keep yourself and those around you safe.

You lie. You hide. You pretend.

And underneath it all you wish so desperately someone would see past the mask, see the real you, the you that’s struggling, that’s hurting, that’s falling apart, the you you’re too afraid to bring to light.

I was scared. I didn’t want people to think I was crazy. I knew something was wrong, but I hid it.

I hid that there were times I felt like my body wasn’t my own, times when I felt distant from the world like I was walking through a dream, times when I disappeared to nowhere in my head and didn’t come back, times when I didn’t recognize my own family, times when I felt so mentally sick it turned physical. Something was wrong. Everything was wrong. But I told no one. And it destroyed me.

Runways by Sleeping Wolf

I hid in between the evergreen trees. Below me, the field sprawled out, and across the field, the playground loomed. There, I could see my mother searching, searching for me.

It wasn’t the first time I’d run away. And it wasn’t the last.

I was always enthralled by the idea of running away. It seemed fanciful to me, a brilliant adventure. But as things got harder at home, the idea became less of a fantastical appeal and more of a potential necessity for survival.

I didn’t know it yet, but my mother had been psychologically abusing me for years.

I was afraid. I was always afraid. Home became a prison. And I was trapped within its beige-painted walls. Nowhere was safe. I was on edge all the time. I didn’t have anyone to turn to. No one would help me. No one could save me. The people that were supposed to protect me became the people that hurt me the most.

But when I listened to this song, a little bit of the magic returned to me. A fire reignited behind my eyes. I could imagine a future where I had escaped this prison and was living wild, happy, and free. It was my song of hope, a reminder that if things ever got too bad, there was still magic out there, even in the runaways.

A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing by Set It Off

I dedicate this song to my mother.

I trusted her, and all along she was taking tiny blades of words and stabbing me over and over again, bleeding me out so slowly I didn’t notice until I lay crumpled on the floor. And then she lorded over me and berated me for not being able to get back up.

She was my mom.

And she became my hell.

Psychological abuse leaves scars imprinted deep in your mind that will never go away, especially if it’s someone you trust, someone you can’t get away from, someone you were supposed to be able to rely on.

When I was sixteen, I heard that word for the first time: emotional abuse. And I thought, no way, that’s ridiculous. My mother would never. But the more research I did the more things started adding up until finally, with tears streaming down my face, I had to accept it.

She tore me apart and I let her. I laid at her feet and let her walk all over me.

But not anymore.

When I finally realized what was being done to me, I refused to let it continue. I refused to let myself continue to be hurt like this. So, I fought back. I tried to save myself. Because no one else would.

This was my angry song. I listened to it and I thought of her, and I sang those words, aiming them like daggers at a target of her heart.

Run, Baby, Run by The Rigs

On March 31, 2019, I discovered something about myself I thought was impossible.

I wrote it all down, every little detail, because I couldn’t believe it to be true. I needed proof because what was happening to me wasn’t possible.

On that night, someone else took control of my body. I got locked deep inside my own head while someone else moved my limbs and spoke through my lips and thought with my head.

She couldn’t take care of herself like she usually does.

So I had to take control. She shut down and I think that’s the first time I’ve been influencing without her there beside me. It was a strange sensation. She thinks a lot but there were no thoughts. She would describe it as robotic, but I was stilling there, feeling, working, cleaning up her mess.

I don’t know where Lilli went. She’s tucked deep inside my head. I’ve never lost her so completely before and it’s kind of scary.

– Alyx

I had others. Other people in my head. Other identities. Other consciousnesses residing in my mind.

One of them was named Alyx. They were the first to come out.

Another? Her name was Sable. And this was her song.

Sable had a history that she never lived, but that felt as real as though she had. She had memories of a past that never happened, but they were just as vivid and hurt just as much as though they had.

These are called psuedomemories, and Sable has written extensively about her past on our blog: Our Multiple Life.

Her history wasn’t a good one. Her memories weren’t happy.

And her past had uncanny parallels to mine.

She was abandoned when she was young by her family. She was alone for the majority of her life. She was being hunted by creatures that wouldn’t give her rest.

Daylight’s dying

Run, baby, run, baby, run

Full moon’s rising

Run, baby, run, baby, run

Sable’s world was never bright with sunlight. She lived in a shadowy grey haze. And when night came and it got dark, the creatures would come out and she had to run.

Listening to this song was her way back to her old life, her old world. It made her feel at home. Her past was a horrible one, but it was hers, and she missed the future she never got to create.

I looked up out the window into the night sky, shrouded with thick dark clouds, and I plucked my earbuds out of my ears, set down my phone, and clicked pause.