Cutter? [Hanako]

[Doomish]

I found out something interesting on the internet the other day. I was listening to some sad music- not that I sought it out, it's just what was on the radio -and after the song was over, the melancholy feeling it gave me still lingered. I was curious as to why that is, so I looked it up and apparently music that expresses familiar emotions can instill those emotions in the listener. If you hear a sad song about a breakup and you've just had one, it'll feel more personal to you. I guess in hindsight that much is obvious.

It's deeper than that, though. The study showed that people who sought out sad music were often suppressing those feelings, expressing them externally through the songs they chose to listen to. Like a feedback loop: If you are trying not to feel sad and listen to sad music anyway, it'll make you feel worse. It's using your own capacity for empathy against you. That's why when you look up a self-help guide or go onto the suicide prevention website they recommend putting on some happy music or getting some exercise. Your brain, without you even realizing it, will take on some of the emotions of your surroundings.

The song was about leaving your past behind- It was about your memories following you just like your shadow, always mimicking your every step and looming over your shoulder like a beast ready to swallow you up. In so few words it spoke of how your future can vanish in an instant either by chance or by your own inability to act on opportunities. I don't know which would better apply to me.

Maybe that's the real trick. The sadness stayed with me for so much longer because the song's subject matter applied to me. It's my own personal version of the breakup thing. I don't know who I'm going to become, and I've got a past that's so intimate that it clings to my very flesh and bones. Hair falling around my face, or a skirt around my legs, or sleeves around my arms. That's my shadow, my beast.

The mind is a very strange thing. I know nothing about psychology, only what I've read in books or online, but the brain is definitely interesting to me. Here, now, in my room alone, I feel perfectly calm and safe. I feel at home here. But as soon as I step through the threshold and into the hallway, it's like I've entered a completely different dimension. I have to force myself to smile, or to speak. It takes conscious effort to put one foot in front of the other on rare occasions. And those times when I can't stand the oppressive feelings any longer...

Why? Why do my feelings work like that? I want to know if other people work the same way as I do, but how could they know? There's no way to describe the feeling of panic in physical words. It's just something that happens. I'm sure everybody feels it at some point, but how do people who don't have my brain manage to keep it down? How can pain, emotional or physical or otherwise, linger for so long after the fact..?

I now sit on the edge of my bed, contemplating all of this. From looking this up I feel like I've gained so much knowledge, and yet learned nothing. I wish this was the first time I've felt this way. My head is in my hand, my body curled in on itself like the Thinker. Joints sore from sitting this way for so long. Eyes heavy and bagged. I look down at my arm, the gnarled, twisted scars. And I sigh.

[Bad Apple]

And when you read a story that identifies with your present, even generally, it'll likewise feel more personal.

Thanks for the piece, Doomish, always appreciate 'em.

My playlist has no shortage of accompanying music, though the themes are so ambiguous that it could've been any of a million songs...