Don’t re-open old wounds in order to examine their origins. Leave them healed. –Richard Bandler

I sort of had an epiphany last Friday. The real reason I listen to metal music.

The past is something I don’t often like to revisit. There are not many stories about my past that I like to tell. But the story I most like to share, is different. It’s a bit difficult getting past the lump in my throat and sharing my story of depression, but I know it gives other people hope, and it is a big part of who I am. Even now, I hesitate writing about it publicly, and usually write about it in summary. I know it’s not something everyone wants to hear. I know I personally still flinch when someone makes a joke about antidepressants. I get offended when someone makes a wrist-cutting joke. In a nutshell: I’ve been there. It’s not something to be joked about.

When I was younger, I disliked metal music. I listened to anything but metal music. I wasn’t such a fan of country music, I had listened to a lot of it when I was younger and didn’t find it as interesting as pop music or rap. Pop music made me smile. Dance music made me dance. Rap music made me nod my head vigorously. Classic music, ballads and other classic rock pieces make me nostalgic. Songs about love made me cry. But I avoided metal music and I always said it made my head hurt.

That was before the demons came and numbed it. But you know what? I thank depression. I thank depression for pulling me under, making me devoid of feeling, and letting me feel what it’s like to be able to have feelings after years of feeling nothing at all.

Nothing makes me react like the way I do to metal music. Metal music makes me feel alive.

I’m a generally open person. There are things I tell people about like it’s no big deal. But somewhere, somehow, it still eats me inside. When I listen to metal music, I feel like I am talking to the music and the music is talking to me. It understands me. It understands me where a person can’t, or won’t. It’s almost like the music becomes my voice, a part of me.

I feel like myself. I don’t feel lost, or sad, at the same time I don’t feel happy-go-lucky, or even confused. I just feel like I am myself. I have not been to a single metal or hard rock concert and regretted going a little bit deaf or becoming squished between people in a mosh pit.

Metal music is what depression took away from me. It makes me live.