December 31st 2011 I really wished I was home, I’ve never been a party person. I felt uncomfortable and awkward as I sat by myself in the corner of a room in a house I unfamiliar with. But I was able to breathe again when someone somewhere passed a laptop in my direction. I accepted. For twenty minutes I scrolled through tumblr, completely dedicated to ignore all the “HAPPY NEW YEARS!” text posts from users two hours ahead of my time zone. I was in a trance as I looked at psychedelic art and Doctor Who jokes and edits of the same La Dispute flower over and over again. I didn’t even notice someone sit next to me looking over my shoulder. |
“Except Twenty One Pilots, they
are cool”
“Uh, who’s that?”
“Here,” He reached for the laptop and signed in to his iTunes, “Listen to this song, it’ll change your life.” So I sat, and listened, said they were cool, he moved on to another band, I went home, slept, and carried out my life.
February 2012
Again, I’m going to skip a lot of details about a relationship, a heartbreak, a breakup. My boyfriend of a year and six months and I broke up. It was bad.) Not even a week later, my “friends” who had supported me and made me feel happy again, turned on me. First just two of them. Spreading rumors about me, making awful tweets and facebook statuses about me, completely ignoring me at school, and making everyone around me hate me. I started to get anxiety attacks at school. I would cry all the time and I didn’t trust anyone. I turned to tumblr to vent. But even that wasn’t safe anymore.
refreshed the page there would be more. Coming faster than I could read them.
Some I answered, some ignored. An hour passed and there had been around 50
messages all over my blog. Each on getting worse and worse. The last one, “the world would be a lot better place if you would just drop dead”.
Again, I will skip a lot of small details, but know that everything got a lot worse from there. The depression that had been hiding in the back of my head had crawled and consumed everything. Every thought was invaded and every thing I was familiar with became transparent.
Twenty One Pilots was my therapy. Every time I felt the
scary thoughts crawling around in my head, I turned on Addict With A Pen, Save, etc.. The lyrics racked in my brain, bouncing around the depression. I had something to look forward to every day. And I smiled when I saw Tyler and Josh tweet something absolutely hilarious. I was happy. I was healthy. I was alive.I even got my hands on a ticket to their first sold out LC show that April. The show where they announced their deal with Fueled By Ramen.
Today is August 17th 2013. Five shows, meeting Tyler and Josh twice, a new school, telling all my new friends about TOP, meeting new amazing people from the fan base, an amazing boyfriend, and 600 tumblr followers later, I AM ALIVE. Not only am I alive, but I will stay alive. I really cannot express how important this band is to me. How these lyrics have helped me build my confidence, believe and trust in people again and be able to sing as loud as I would like. I know my story isn’t very unusual, bullying has become such a huge presents in all our lives, but I still talk about it. Everyone needs a pilot. Something or someone to get them through something so difficult. I recommend this band to anyone who needs help. You will get through this, you will be ok, and you will have an entire fan base to stand by your side. You will stay alive.
concert-addiction.tumblr.com
suchsmall-pilots.tumblr.com
sopha_doph
Thank you so much for the opportunity to spread my story, and others. Thank you for being not only a fan of my favorite band, but a friend. Thank you, thank you, thank you.