13 Chained Brain

My Pitch

A monster can control people in ways they don’t understand. They can be a complex god who does diabolical things to lesser beings just for fun, it could be Cthulhu, the government, or better yet their mind. Our minds can restrain our thinking process, our emotion, our motivation, our desires, they could stem from trauma, self doubt, bullying, and much more. During those times their minds slowly begin to dwindle. They feel trapped, unable to do their goals because they feel like failures and the only way to get rid of it is to do drugs to get a sense of feelings. We could experience horrific accidents and poof, now you’re stuck with mental health issues which you will battle forever and the continuous struggles bring this numbing feeling to your head and the only way you see to get rid of it is to do drugs, to get a sense of being alive. It will tear you bit by bit till there is nothing left of your former self. As well from continuous self isolation or anxiety of making a mistake in the public’s eyes. You think that masking your struggles and mental health issues is the best choice to do so people around you don’t have to worry about you. A way to help those who struggle with it, is to listen to their story and ask how you can help them. I also plan to look further at different medians and how they explore mental health issues and will incorporate my past issues and others from further research.

Short Form Media

I chose to do a drawing to represent the constant tiredness and exhaustion you feel from mental health such as depression, but also in a way I felt during my own period. The feeling of unmotivated actions and constant back and forth of disappointment I had with myself during high school, loads of work piling up and not doing anything but also wanting to do them. I felt that no matter how hard I tried to work on it would be ineffective so I never gave it a chance, so the anxiety would then build up because my grades were falling down. But from the support I got from my friends I was able to continue on and start tackling the pile of work I had. Then I found art to be a very good way to express myself and it was also a very good method of meditation. This is what I felt was good to express and show how one feels with their thoughts and feelings.

Informative Article

Song: Miss Misery, Elliott Smith

I’ll fake it through the day

With some help from Johnny walker red

Send the poison rain down the drain

To put bad thoughts in my head

Two tickets torn in half

And a lot of nothing to do

Do you miss me, miss misery

Like you say you do?

…

The head of Depression:

In this first part of the song we are told how people/himself masks his battle with depression and difficulty of dealing with it. He will fake his exterior surface by putting up a fake image of himself by displaying positive outlooks in life with the help of “Johnny Walker ” , an alcoholic beverage. Even though it causes more harm to him by poisoning his thoughts with further mental anguish he will continue doing so to avoid further attention from others and to void the numbness feeling. Even purchasing tickets to go as far as possible to try and clear the mind won’t do any good, miss misery will always accompany. In the end they will also go back to her because she can coax them into coming back, like a toxic relationship that is difficult to leave.

The constant braiding thoughts produce misery, leads to addiction and further into the song you could hear hints of how it affects his and others’ lives. Leaving a magazine laying around the house shows how messy life is without doing any chores or form of work. The thoughts leave them with no form of confidence, helpful comments won’t be acknowledged. This leaves the mind to be in oblivion, a state of confusion and unawareness of what is going on around them, a forever numbing feeling.

With the constant feelings that restrains one’s body down it shows how monstrous mental health is like depression, it will debilitate a normal person down to their rock bottom they have never been before. The causes could be infinite from social isolation to death of a loved one, as long as it has a big enough impact or is repeated enough times it will imprint like a virus and suck the life out of them till they can’t handle it anymore or lead the person to use different forms of drugs to control it’. It will police your ability to do anything you want and will only leave you with very few options on what you can do, if left unattended for a long time it will bring the person down to their last breath.

“To vanish into oblivion, Is easy to do ”. As stated before, oblivion is the perfect word to describe someone’s mind who suffers from mental difficulties. You could be hungry but won’t be able to cook yourself food and instead eat unhealthy food or just eat all the time because it is the only time you feel safe and good. The numbness leads to constant search to find that thing that will take away that numbing feeling whether it be drugs or other addiction. It will lead to your eventual demise.

In the end I believe songs are a powerful tool that can help people understand the difficulties of those who suffer from mental health issues. How small it may seem but creates horrible byproducts as stated before and how they have little to no self-control on what they are capable of doing.  But also how no one should look away and should try to help even if it may seem miniscule. Just accompanying them could be the first step into helping them.

Cited Sources:

Smith , Steven Paul, and Larry Crane. “Miss Misery.” YouTube, YouTube, 13 Dec. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRlw1W_MkTs.