Amanda Jean & Staticide 4- My Battle With Mental Illness (Pt. 3 of 3)

For those who follow my music (thank you all again for that), I had gone from constantly putting out music over the course of a 6 year span (about 7 mixtapes and hundreds of songs) to dropping a few songs here and there every so often. I was going maybe 2 years between releases because my attention was elsewhere and I was being pretty productive. Plus I was happy at some points. As you get older, you mature more and the things I was talking about in my music I felt I had started to outgrow so there wasn’t much of a need to put out as much music and my ideas were few and far between and I always told myself if I ever felt the hunger starting to go away, that was when it would be time for me to walk away. I am either “all in” or “not in at all”. I will never put out anything half hearted. 2016’s “Thirty 4 30” was my “I still love making music, but maybe this will be the last one” mixtape. I never did any of my music to become famous, this was all for my love of music and the fans I have.

Amanda Jean was her first and middle name. She was this beautiful woman I had worked with who I had a crush on for the longest. I thought I was out of her league and had no chance until I dug up enough of my guts to finally talk to her and found that she actually had a crush on me too! As soon as we exchanged numbers, she had texted me not even five minutes after and it was constant communication from there. There was not a day that went by where we weren’t talking or seeing each other. I was actually for the first time in my life “genuinely” happy. Amanda was different. She cared in a way that no one else did at the time. We never smothered each other, never got in the way of one another, never worried when the other was out and about but yet we were still joined at the hip and always happy. We shared some of our deepest secrets and she was the first girl I opened up to about my depression and anxiety and she embraced it and told me she would never ever hurt me and I had nothing to worry about. She completely opened me. Got to a point where I forgot what depression was. There was never a bad moment between us, all honesty and trust, and even got deep to the point where we talked of having a family. Said she was excited to one day have a child with me... yea, that deep. She had me wrapped around her finger, yet, she never used me or abused the love we had for one another. I loved her like no other and vice versa. It was at that point that I knew once and for all I was done with making music. I even blogged about it on this very site. I finally had everything I ever wanted and life was complete. Then all of the sudden, just like that, she flipped the script and turned my world upside down when she just left me out in the cold for no reason at all. She literally just ended it out of the blue. No explanation other than it wasn’t my fault and it was nothing I did. I even asked if it were someone else and to be honest with me and she said “no”, and that she would never do that to me. She left me and wouldn’t even reply to my messages or calls for a while. I would see this girl at work and get a cold shoulder. We went from all love, talks of having a family, her excited to one day have a child with me, sharing our all with each other to me being treated like a complete stranger. Then out of the blue, she asked me why I wasn’t talking to her and I’m like “wait, you’re the one who broke things off with me and gave me a cold shoulder when I’ve spent day and night reaching out to you!! What do you mean?!?” Then she said she wanted to be cool and then would go back to the cold shoulder. It was an emotional torture session. There were other things she did that factored into all of this that emotionally destroyed me, but they are very personal and I’m not prepared to share them at the moment. I spiraled into a depression so deep, people around me were concerned about my well being. She really put me into one of the darkest places I have ever been in my life because of what she did. And there were alot of things running through my head about what to do, but I knew the first thing that needed to be done.

“Staticide” is the name of my mixtape series. Each “Staticide” has told a story through my songs. They have a “theme” to them. My fans know that when there is a “Staticide” on the way, it’s something major. After “Staticide 3.5” in 2013, I decided that I was finished with the “Staticide” series and was ready for something different. I figured 3.5 was my peak and there was no way I was going to top that so no need for me to even try. After 3.5, I released “Thirty 4 30” in 2016 and I wasn’t going to be someone who was going to keep making music if I couldn’t top or match my production from my past mixtapes so “Thirty 4 30” was it. No more. Done. I had no more motivation to keep making music so why try? Either go all in or don’t do it at all. Once Amanda sent me into the depression she did, my emotions were everywhere. I had hatred, anger, sadness, depression... you name it, I had it. It was at that point when my passion and love for making music came back. So many ideas for songs just overwhelmed my brain and I started writing again. I was in a zone. Took me back to the hunger I had when I first started making music. It was time for a new “Staticide” and I was ready to go all in. The songs “Forever Is A Lie” and “Amanda Jean” were done during the peak of my depression so the emotion is raw. “989 (Late Night Session)” was done at 2:00 am because I couldn’t sleep and in one take. Making this mixtape was what kept my mind afloat and what kept me from falling into a deeper depression. Plus, it was therapy. No better way for me to get all of my emotions out than through a musical therapy session. I was really proud of the finished product. Is this my last? I don’t know. To be honest, I hope it is. The end of the mixtape should indicate that, but given this battle with depression and anxiety I face, music has always been my way to go to war with it so only time will tell.