Your eyes must do some raining if you’re ever gonna grow. But when crying don’t help, and you can’t compose yourself, it’s best to compose a poem. – Bright Eyes

So for anyone who’s new here, Heads Above The Waves exists to raise awareness about self-harm and depression, to get people talking openly about it, and to encourage people to find creative and positive ways to deal with everything that life throws your way.

(Also, if you ARE new here, hello! It’s good to have you. Stick the kettle on, and have a read/watch of some inspirational stuff on here. It’s more hopefully a bit more uplifting than a Buzzfeed article about cats.)

One thing that I keep on banging on about when talking about HATW is that we ALL have bad days. It doesn’t matter who you are, you’re going to have terrible days where nothing goes right, and the weight of the world is on your shoulders. It sucks, but it’s life. You gotta have bad days, to gain perspective on how good the good days are.

My teenage years were pretty terrible, and I went through hell. But I’ve come out so much stronger as a result of it. You can trust me when I say: it gets better. “Your eyes must do some raining if you’re ever gonna grow”. It’s okay to not be okay. It’s okay to cry. Fellas, that certainly applies to you too. I’ve never been a fan of the whole “stiff upper lip” attitude that gets forced onto boys. We need to cry, we need to emote, we need to be vulnerable sometimes. Because the truth is: we become stronger, better people for it. Whatever’s getting you down right now, one day, you’ll find a reason for why you went through it, even if that reason is just to say “I made it through that rough patch, I can make it through this one.”. It’s all part of finding out who you are. And how you deal with a bad day now can become a habit for how you deal with bad days in the future, so it may as well be something useful and/or creative.

Now, if you’ve read/watched my story, you’ll know what a huge part music played in my recovery, and continues to play in my life. I write music and lyrics to match all sorts of moods that I go through. I write overly happy songs when things are going right, and I write angsty melancholy when everything’s going wrong. But turning to a notebook and scribbling everything that was in my head (sometimes it’d rhyme, sometimes it wouldn’t) was such a hugely helpful, cathartic release for me. It was getting everything out in the open, but without me having to actually say anything. But then, there it was, in front of me, staring back at me, so I could deal with it.

To this day, if I’m trying to figure something out, I’ll grab a piece of paper and write “My problem is…” and then “So the solution is…” and actually the process of physically writing that helps my brain to think around the problem and come up with a solution. I don’t know whether that’s helpful for you or not, but maybe it’s worth giving it a go. Although sometimes, I can’t come up with a solution, and I’ll end up angrily scribbling all over the page. It doesn’t always make things clearer, but it’s good to let out frustration, especially in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone (except maybe the environment…).

So: let yourself cry. Let yourself be bummed out, and don’t beat yourself up for it. You’re having a crappy day, so you feel crappy. That’s normal.

And the next time that you do have a bad day, and especially if everything starts to get too much, just try scribbling down what’s in your mind on a piece of paper. You might find it really helpful, or you might not. It’s about finding what works for you. And hopefully, Heads Above The Waves can help you with that.

– Si