fyeahpoisonelves

I have hundreds of scars on my arms.
I’ve been through depression and lived. I used to cut myself with razorblades just to feel something. As I got older, the razors were replaced with drugs, again, just to feel something. I didn’t even know what I was depressed about, but I could have told you for hours on end what pissed me off. I look back on it as a practice in stupidity- not because I was depressed, but because how I handled it.
Depression is depression- it rarely has a source when it’s with you every day. It can be a lot of things in one thing, but no matter what it is, it’s fucked.
Trust me- I used to wake up and look into the black hole of my life- VERY few real friends, and I’m still not what a majority of the female race would consider a “catch,” and felt often like a failure in my parents’ eyes, the world’s eyes [and there was rarely a shortage of teachers, councelors, peers, who didn’t mind telling me that’s exactly what I was], nothign I tried worked, I knew if I tried anything new I’d fail…
—— You gotta use that shit. Take all that pain, all that rage, and rise above any motherfucker who wants to put you below them and make yourself amazing. You have it in you, everybody does. The three things that began my road to getting on with life despite the hell is the philosophy that you don’t HAVE to do anything. What you choose to do or not has its repercussions but you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, including be depressed. The first day you’re able to leave, you don’t have to live in a shit town [though I’d highly recommend not doing it until you could leave safely or you’ll end up eating out of garbage cans like I did]. It’s NOT you, though——
The second thing was, wether he knew it or not, Henry Rollins vented a lot of my shit beautifully.
The third thing was the hardest and that was the strange sort of apathy toward the depression. It was there but I got sick of it. I even learned to find comedy in it.
The one thing I’ve learned in life is you NEVER KNOW! When I was going through this, hell, even five years ago, I NEVER could have predicted I’d be doing what I’m doing, that it would provide for me and my family, and most of all people would LIKE it.
A month ago I didn’t know I’d be going through a divorce, either- you just never know and what would it change if you did? Life is good and bad- sometimes more or less of the other and rarely is it fair, but you can and you will rise above it. Happiness and contentment is not a given in life, and most of teh work for it is the refusal to accept anything less.
You don’t choose to be depressed- that’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard- but you do have a choice to accept it. Once you choose not to accept it, you begin a long, hard process. Once you finish it, things change.
I don’t know if you quite expected I’d print your letter, but I decided to because I’ve been where you’re at, and I’ve been judged too much to judge anyone formerly existing, and I know that there’s at least one out of every ten Poison Elves readers feel as you do right now- that’s around 2,000 people, and more than that have been where you’re at.
If this letter being printed upsets you, I apologize. I don’t normally print letters this personal out of respect for the person’s feelings (after all, the letters start off with “Drew” and not “World”) but I also believe that just knowing there’s people like you who are goign through it, and people like me who’ve come out of the other side all right, may make it easier on someone who feels like they’re alone.
Learn to love yourselves, folks- ‘cuz sometimes nobody’s going to do it for you.
And if this is a depressing thought, fuck ‘em.

—

Drew Hayes, creator/writer/artist of Poison Elves - responding to a letter written by a fan, Poison Elves #5, 1995. (via garethgraves)

This is why I write comics, Crazy Bastards like him who got my through the worst of it. I need to do it for another generation to see that there are fucked up Bastards just like them going through hell. Creators like Drew write stories that might as well be titled

“How to go through hell and get the T-shirt for free” 

Sometimes Music and Comics are all you have when you are down.

(via revrendoni)

(via revrendoni)