I first talked about this before, but it really came alive through my very first real song. Imagine this: I’m at university, second lecture of semiotics. My head is a storm, my thoughts racing, my eyes unable to settle. All around me—two different classes, about sixty students—I’m studying their every move, every glance.
Inside, though, I’m restless. Something isn’t working. My heart is sending signals my mind can’t decode, and I feel like I’m drowning in noise. Chaos. The university. The strange weight of being there but not really there—like a passenger. So I try to turn it all into images, hoping to make sense of it.
The first picture comes instantly: a boy falling endlessly, tumbling into the void of the universe. I can see him dropping forever, though I know it’s impossible—unless something, or someone, pushed him down. Falling. Falling. Into the frozen dark of space.
Then another image: guilt. His guilt. He’s hurt someone, and her blood is on his hands. A girl.
And then, a sun—burning something almost entirely away, until all that’s left are glowing embers, turning to ashes. Ashes that drag the boy even further down.
What I didn’t understand at the time was that this song wasn’t about some boy at all. It was about me. And even now, every word still clings to me like skin.
Sometimes I think I should wear a T-shirt that says “Handle with care.” A reminder to myself that without a diagnosis, that boy—that version of me—would have kept on falling, endlessly, into the frozen emptiness of space.