“LOOK AT THE SKY” – a film inspired by Porter Robinson – powered by Happy Scribe
I remember one day I was driving to work and it was just such a terrible morning. I was so anxious and I was so confused about myself. I didn’t understand understand why I was feeling the way I was feeling. But I remember listening to an unreleased song by an artist named Porter Robinson. And it was titled look at the sky. And as I started to listen to this song, it filled me with light and it filled me with hope. Because the artist, Porter Robinson was describing exactly what I had been feeling for so long. And he was giving me a reason to keep going.
Won’t be much better. Hold on. I won’t be much better. Look at the sky. I’ll be Oliver at you. I’ll be back. The sky
you. Do you feel like you’ve ever been mentally ill?
At 1.1 hundred percent? Yes.
Can you think of a specific time?
Yeah, let’s say, I don’t know, four months ago. Four or five months ago? Yeah. It got to a point where my insecurities were so present in the way that I connected with people, or should I say the lack of connection that I recognized so strongly how they were just taking over.
I didn’t really feel like I had to deal with any major mental health issues until honestly, the last year or.
Two when I was like ten, I think I started to do little compulsions that were like retracing my steps and turning the lights on and off a hundred times and sinks and everything. And my parents were like, what is this? What’s happening?
I didn’t understand why, I guess, but I started just like generalizing and assuming the worst. And I guess that’s what anxiety is. Like, assuming the worst in the situation sometimes. And so I had a struggle in high school, feeling that a lot of my friends were fake. So I started distancing myself.
It wasn’t something that if I went to a guidance session, it was just over.
I remember I had a friend who Oliver on my street.
And we’d hang out on time.
He’d come over and then sometimes he’d like come over, knock on the door, like to come play. And I was like too scared to answer the door. Really?
Yeah. And then some days I just wouldn’t play with him because of that.
Every day I would cry before school and I would cry during school. And then I would cry at night before I go to bed because I had to go to school the next day.
I went through this period where I felt almost out of body. I felt like I wasn’t myself. I felt like I had a very loose grasp on my own identity and like, who I was as a person. It was a really disconcerting experience. It was it freaks you out.
Kind of just put me into this pit. I had just no motivation to do anything. Didn’t feel like I really had anyone.
I feel so off in my life, I guess, and I get anxiety about that. So it feels very like my brain is going in a million different directions and it feels like my brain can’t catch a breath.
You kind of feel a little bit crazy, honestly, or like, whoa, I’m so different from everyone else?
Well, at the beginning, nothing. I just kind of was like a.
Miserable person at times. I’ve been not bullied, but where I’ve been made fun of for seeking help or, like, the way that I look.
Or when you’re a creative who your music and everything is built around your personality and who you are as a person, I think that that can be terrifying. When you feel like you don’t know who you are, who you are as a person yourself, it’s hard to put into words.
This is what it is, this is my reality and this is what I’m feeling and it’s what I’m going through. And yeah, tell my mom I’m sorry.
Do you still feel like, despite all the growth that it’s there, even with the tools and the therapy, that it’s still there in you, do you think it’ll always be there? Right? Because I’ll put myself in the picture. I suffer from anxiety for real, like, I really do, and I just had to accept at some point, it’s always going to be this.
Yeah. I think that’s something that I’ve come to terms with in the last two years. In a lot of ways, these feelings don’t necessarily go away. They hide and go and hiding for a while, and then they wait for the right moment and they pop back up. You’re like, oh, I haven’t felt this in eight months. Yeah, my mind is going, this place, I haven’t gone there in four years.
But it’s how we pump the brakes, right?
Yeah.
I also feel like talking about it, therefore inspiring others to realize they’re not alone ultimately makes you feel the same way, that that sharing of information has mutually beneficial effects in that regard.
It does. It does. Because where I’m feeling alone, I don’t feel so alone when I see the response and I see that it’s affecting so many people. So it does give me the music has always been and I’ve always said this has been one big SOS out to the world to see who out there connects with what I’m saying, who feels the same way.
And I know you say, I’m sorry, who would you please, who would you think?
Oh, sometimes the inner voice is encouraging, calling for you to run those final few yards. And nearly there. Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. It will all be OK in the end.
Knowing that I have anxiety is really difficult because even opening up about my mental health problems is very difficult, and it’s hard for me to accept that I have that, you know, this doesn’t last forever. And what you’re feeling right now doesn’t last forever. You just have to take it a day at a time.
You’re not going to be in this darkness forever and there’s help that you can get and there’s just so many resources that can improve your quality of life. And honestly, I think it just makes you a stronger person.
It’s so real because I think that when you get lost and when you kind of go into this state, it forces you into a position where you have to find yourself and you have to figure out who you are and what you want as a person. And I think you come out of the other end a lot stronger, which I think is cool.
Just trying to accept it as like the only real way to start to get past it and fully understand it. Because if you just keep trying to push it away every time it comes back, it’s just going to be the same issues over and over.
You are loved by God and so many other people saying all these negative thoughts isn’t going to get you anywhere.
What’s the date today?
November 21. 2020?
Yes, November 2020. I think a lot of people said this was really bad year, right? And I’ve had a lot of crazy stories happening to me this year. It’s been a personally for me, a good year. And so I guess your happiness is not dependent on the world. Your happiness isn’t dependent on other people’s emotional states. You can still have a good time and good life regardless of things that are going on.
Things that you go through that are so hard just make you so much stronger. And you can use your own experience to help other people who are going through the same thing or similar things. So really, I mean, it sounds pretty cliche to say you won’t feel like this forever, but it’s true.
If you want to be who you need to be, you need to show what parts of your life so this is a part of it.
Sometimes you just need to let things run.
Of course, try to be an impact on someone else. And so hopefully that whatever it is, that as long as I’m using it to my ability, being open about it, then I know if it makes a difference in one person, it’s worth it.
When I seek first to connect to God and to connect to heaven, everything else falls in line. If God can tell me who I am, if he can unpack things for me that nobody else can tell me, if I’m not turning to that first, nothing else matters. So God is real. Heavenly Father truly knows us and he can tell us exactly who we are. And that’s number one.
If I said that, boy, have a lost heart of me. When you wake, your barking for the promise to come back just gave me one.
Music thank you.
Thank you. And hoping made her more someone tell me something. I’m putting.
dyejo
Guest Author
J Washburn
