My Manic Mind – Mixtape Playlist
My mind has been stretched and skewed in so many directions lately.
I’m tired during the day, but when it is time for bed, my manic mind races and won’t let me sleep. I struggle with this mania, and sometimes even try to make sense of it (which can be bad).
My manic mind likes to make me overthink and analyze everything down to the most minute detail. It blows up and magnifies the simplest things.
It distorts reality.
This manic mania makes me angry and I sometimes scream inside my head from the rage. I often wonder if those around me can hear the silent, yet overpowering screaming in my head, or at least see it in my face or eyes.
There is no logic to this feeling – no trigger – that’s the hardest part of it all.
If only I knew the trigger, I could shut it down before it starts. I fear that this disease has found a way to overtake me, as my previous coping skills failed and I resorted to pharmaceuticals to help me cope.
Have I found relief for this manic mania yet? Yes and no.
The voices are still there, in the back of my mind. Most recently it’s been the voices of “you’re a loser with no degree and no future!” and “you’ve wasted your life away trying to be something and somebody!” I entertain them for a few moments then politely tell them to shut the fuck up – ok so maybe not politely.
I cried yesterday, although not like I used to just a few short weeks ago. My get up and go is still not functioning, so it is still a major struggle to get my workdays going.
I’m quiet and reserved in weekly meetings with my boss and co-worker when I really just want to snap and go off. I know it won’t accomplish anything. My co-worker doesn’t have a sympathetic bone in her body. She wouldn’t understand this monster inside me. She would think I am just making excuses. If I had this job back in the early 2000s, I would run rings around her in the field. I just don’t have it inside me right now.
I am tormented and torn.
The only thing I can say with full certainty I am committed to is my Saturday writing at the coffeehouse – where I sit writing this. Although, just as with my workdays, it is still a struggle to get going and leave my apartment.
Some of the writing I’ve done in my journals scare me. I won’t put it on here. It’s dark, too dark. Maybe I’ll include it in the book I’m working on, Bipolar Poetics and Melancholy Musings: The Ups & Downs of a Tortured Mind.
Music is always my saving grace through anything I encounter in my life. The following mixtape playlist has a great power punch of ’90s and modern rock/alternative songs that exemplify the anger, rage, confusion, and mania in my mind.
It is my hope that maybe this music mix might help someone else out there going through something similar, to let them know they are not alone in the struggle to keep sane.
This too shall pass…
- Liar – Rollins Band
- Everyday is Exactly the Same – Nine Inch Nails
- The Nobodies – Marilyn Manson
- What Do I Have to Do? – Stabbing Westward
- The Red – Chevelle
- Hemorrhage (In My Hands) – Fuel
- Fall to Pieces – Velvet Revolver
- Bother – Stone Sour
- Hate Me – Blue October
- Scars – Papa Roach
- Somewhere I Belong – Linkin Park
- Down in a Hole – Alice in Chains
- Violet – Hole
- Something I Can Never Have (studio version) – Nine Inch Nails
- Broken – Seether featuring Amy Lee
- I’m So Sick – Flyleaf
- Pain – Three Days Grace
- My Demons – Starset
- Coming Undone – Korn
- Your Disease – Saliva
- Bound for the Floor – Local H
- Mudshovel – Staind
- Bat Country – Avenged Sevenfold
- River of Deceit – Mad Season
- Suicide Messiah – Black Label Society
- Serenity – Godsmack
- Headstrong – Trapt
- Paralyzer – Finger Eleven
- Break Stuff – Limp Bizkit
- Toxicity – System of a Down
- Sober – Tool
- Low Self Opinion – Rollins Band
- So What? – Ministry
- Snakecharmer – Rage Against the Machine
- Down with the Sickness – Disturbed
- Tourniquet – Marilyn Manson
- Cochise – Audioslave
- 45 – Shinedown
- Piggy – Nine Inch Nails
- I Know You – Henry Rollins vs. Nine Inch Nails