Hey everyone, it's FuchsiaPanacea, you better know her by Fuchsia or Athena. I've wanted to make a blog about this for a long long time but never got around to it because I just never knew how to properly express myself or my emotions. But with coronavirus quarantine, familial matters and recent wiki events completely fucking with my mental health, I figured that this is a better time than any to discuss why and how heavy metal music saved my life and inspired me to keep going and pressing onward even through the worst things. I apologize if this blog is a mess, it's not going to be well organized and may be too long for its own good, especially with all that damn embeds.
Heads up for if you're uncomfortable with topics that address suicide, self-harm, and for any reason (it's all valid) my mental health! I recommend going elsewhere if so.
Personal background[]
Hmmm... ummm...
Hrrmmm...
I'm not sure how many people are aware of these facts, but I'm a transgender woman that's struggled with both learning disabilities and some mild variation of autism for my entire life. I have been spent the first half my life practically unconscious because of medicine that was supposed to "make me better" and spent most of the next half isolated from 99% of my family and friends from my hometown and its surroundings. I was never learning anything from the public school system since I was wasting precious time drawing pictures, so my parents eventually taught me themselves and later an online schooling system did it for them. I joined Fantendo in late 2013 in favor of expressing my creativity. Fantendo was the first community I've ever joined and stuck through with for more than a week, and because of my lack of experience with social groups and some very notable "character flaws" I had, I made many mistakes during my first four years here. These ranged from exposing some personal details my family never wanted me to talk about online to making a couple of really bad moves that have hurt people here and outside of here, including one that I'm still stuck with today.
As some of you might have guessed based off of conversations you might've had with me (or observed) or maybe this very paragraph, I have really terrible mental health. I regularly think back to things that've really hurt me or hurt others and because I'm extremely empathetic I cannot help but overthink about such things. If I'm aware that I've hurt someone or a group of people, it is an endless cycle of pain that can never be put to rest for long, even if I can seek out closure. As an example, I've had a really troubled relationship with my sibling Navybolt up until 2019, and even though we're stronger friends than ever I cannot help but think of how much I hurt him. This fear of hurting people runs deep in me to a point where I don't care for myself anymore, I almost never clean up my room and I have found myself resorting to alcohol and junk food for stress relief even though it brings in new issues like weight and deteriorating physical health. For a while, I was regularly falling asleep in the afternoon and waking up around 8-11PM to "start my day". Sometimes I beat up myself on the head with a bottle and still do almost weekly. I've used knives before but I've become too cowardly for them.
I've had very shitty luck trying to get myself fixed. Getting therapy is a game of luck because the ones I've had don't always call me when they're supposed to, even when I call them to try and remind them (this has happened to me lately, twice in a row). While I'm thankful for you all for trying to help me get over some of my emotional pains, especially my girlfriend and some of my closest friends from Time's End, it's just not effective because I can never discuss what's truly bothering me without opening up cans of worms I have no desire to open at the moment. I've even communicated with both of the people that I'm aware I've troubled to a high degree and while I was able to get both to respond to me, I was only able to walk away with the knowledge that I've misunderstood and hurt them even further. Talking to my mother is something I want to do, but she is rather judgmental and there is no way she would be able to swallow what happened without dramatically reacting, which would destroy my ties with her and I don't want that. It doesn't help that everything that I've gone through is something that, in one form or another, has ties to something that's happened in my family.
I actually discussed and confronted a lot of my personal issues through Zinfestation, the story mode to my COLD❄BLOOD project and certainly the most personal thing I've ever written, but I haven't been able to write lately because of a lack of inspiration or drive to. So, at least for the moment, the only solution I have is heavy metal music.
Where does heavy metal come in?[]
Early On[]
Note: Some songs here are not heavy metal, but either hard rock or lean closer to it than straight-up rock. I might get comments questioning why some songs are on these tracks when they're "not metal". Probably should've named the blog about hard rock!
No matter what I was dealing with in life, I always had heavy metal music (or hard rock, grunge, etc.) to fall back on. I began listening to music on a small iPod that I was given when I was like 7 or 8 and would eventually use the bigger iPod my dad lent me and my timeline of computers (Toshiba laptop, Lenovo laptop, Lenovo desktop) to continue listening to music. Sometimes I'd use my phone or imagination to listen to that kind of music. Even through the mental haze I was dealing with up until I was ten years old, I was thoroughly enjoying listening to heavy metal music and always had a good time with it, spacing off so I can imagine myself at a rock concert or taking the mic in the singer's place. Why was I attracted to heavy metal at the time? It wasn't because I understood the lyrics (I couldn't understand a single book I ever read back then), but because I simply loved the sound of the 80's electric guitar and the energetic vibes that music gave me. I was especially fond of guitar solos and songs that had messages I could understand. I can name a couple of songs that completely made me decide heavy metal (or at least hard rock as a whole) was my favorite genre.
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These tracks are among the ones that bring me the most nostalgia, because I've heard these six over and over throughout the first decade of my life. These songs aren't among my personal favorites anymore, but they briefly return me to a time where life wasn't so fucking difficult to deal with. None of these tracks, with the exception of "Crazy Train" as I'd learn much later, dealt with any heavy topics and just rocked my socks off when nothing else would. I should probably mention that I was listening to all these tracks up until I was like twelve or thirteen where I'd begin to branch out and enjoy different music. I'd try out new songs that I've never found before through utilizing the shuffle button on my Dad's iPod, which led me to try out some new songs, and later I'd find other songs through YouTube. All these songs, again, carry the guitar sound I love very much and quickly joined the league of songs I found to be very enjoyable. There's some heavy subject matters here but not overall. These include:
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Up until now[]
My life changed in mid-2015, which is when everything began taking a severe downhill turn for me. As I began to become more self-aware of myself and my deteriorating state of mind, my musical tastes began to rapidly change with it. Thanks to YouTube's recommendations list and later Spotify's own, I'd discover lots of new songs and artists and begin to expand my musical tastes. I no longer regularly listened to music that encouraged me to feel like a rockstar, rather I'd listen to music that correlated with whatever I was dealing with at the time (and now). This is where heavy metal began to really take the role of... a "mentor" if that makes sense. I could not and still cannot express my pain or trauma to most of my family or my friends, but many bands in heavy metal have gone through plenty of trauma (that varies depending on the band) and I was able to relate to some of it on a personal level. Many people probably think that heavy metal is just about rock 'n roll, drugs, and sex, and while I think that over-generalization is pretty fair it's not always the case. I regularly see heavy metal do and talk about things I don't (think I can) find elsewhere.
(QUICK UPDATE: I used to listen to a lot of Metallica back in 2016 and 2017, they were my favorite band at the time and always lit up my mood. I'm glad I got to enjoy their music so much, they've pulled me through a lot and I appreciate what they've done for me. The fans are also delightful, having uploaded very solid Metallica fanworks or discussion videos for the past half a decade or so. I don't listen to Metallica nearly as religiously anymore but they'll always have a special place in my heart.)
Here are several songs that I feel like express elements of my pain.
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Out of all these bands, my favorite is now Alice in Chains. While I don't personally relate to heroin abuse, it is easy for me to substitute it for a different type of pain and let myself de-stress to their songs. Their songs aren't just heavy and self-loathing, they're very well constructed and well-written and succeed in drawing me into every single album (and EP) they've ever recorded. When I feel so low that I begin writing suicide notes, I decide to listen to this band's music so I can draw out my emotions (including tears) and empty myself of... empty feelings. Every time I remember how lead singer Layne Staley went out by heroin abuse, I try to stop self-abusing myself physically and mentally and keep pressing on as I'm supposed to. Other Alice in Chains songs I love include "Down in a Hole", "Dirt", "Angry Chair", "Would?", "Man in the Box", "Love Hate Love", "Again", "Frogs", "Nutshell", "I Stay Away", "Your Decision", "Acid Bubble", "Hollow", "Voices", "Scalpel", "Rainier Fog", "Red Giant", and "All I Am".
This isn't the only band I do this with, I also feel similarly with the heavy bands Slipknot, Linkin Park, Disturbed, Korn, Three Days Grace, Lamb of God, and Five Finger Death Punch who have each helped in giving me aggressive music to punch to so I didn't aim for myself instead. Although they're not as heavy, the bands Nirvana, Soundgarden, Blue Öyster Cult, and (surprisingly) Fleetwood Mac (not even close to metal!) have helped me emotionally too.
I do want to say that I've found some considerably lighter music since 2016 that I regularly listen to that's (generally) not as heavy in lyrical matter as these songs but are still really good. These range from old shit to new shit.
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I could link more songs, but I don't want this blog to take an eternity to load from how many things have to embed (there are six more I'll embed below though). So I'll mention songs that've become subjects of fascination for me as well: "Owner of a Lonely Heart" by Yes, "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd, "Sorrow" by Bad Religion, "Like a Stone" by Audioslave, "Riders on the Storm" by The Doors, "The Spirit of Radio" by Rush, "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" by Meat Loaf, "The Chain" by Fleetwood Mac, "Wake Up" by Mad Season, "In Too Deep" by Sum 41, "Mary Jane's Last Dance" by Tom Petty, and "Land of Confusion" by Genesis. They're not all explicitly rock but fuck you I'm tired and I don't want to give any artist too many songs to be represented by.
Please don't take this blog's message as "metal is the best genre, fuck you!". Although I rarely discuss it, I really like some hip hop music and find some pop stuff to be very enjoyable, and am open to listening to everything that isn't K-pop. Feel free to recommend me whatever you want in my DMs, especially if it has elements you think I might like. The only point of this blog was to say that heavy metal is why I'm still here, still fighting, and it's why I listen to it above everything else. I'll link some of my favorite non-rock songs below:
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Playlist[]
Click on Spotify icon to be taken to full playlist. Clicking the name will open the playlist on Desktop if you have Spotify for Desktop.
Finishing what I started[]
So, what exactly made all these songs and rock/metal/grunge/punk/whatever as a whole save my life? I love the sound of the electronic guitar so that's what drew me into the genre, and the varied lyrical topics about the good and bad sides of life that are sung and written with varying degrees of intensity depending on the band keep me coming back to Spotify to listen to whatever's appropriate for the moment. The day I stop finding solitude and peace in my love for heavy metal music is probably the day I die, because until I find a permanent solution to the problems I have racing around in my head, I'm still going to be dealing with this inner turmoil for a long long time. I hope that these songs will keep me going, because there's a lot of things I know I'll miss out on if I pass away too soon. I can't make promises that I'm going to stick around, even for my girlfriend, but I'm going to try until something makes me crack.
If anyone is interested, I might make another blog talking about my favorite songs and why I love those songs so much, I might even make a series of these blogs since I have a lot to talk about musically. That's up to the community, though. I only brought this blog to life here because the place I would've done it at otherwise is shut down and that means this wiki's gonna have to house pretty much everything I can think of creatively (provided it meets the standards ofc!)
Also I used to listen to post-2000s Nickelback and quite a bit of Hinder and Puddle of Mudd when I was a child. We don't discuss that though