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Fluoxetine

by Whitelands

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about

Mental health is rarely talked about in communities, even less so in ethnic ones. Being a teenager in London, it's almost a journey opening up to people when you need them the most, and more heartbreaking if they can't understand you.

This song is about my long battle with depression which reached a peak when I was prescribed antidepressants in December 2017. These gave me constant nightmares and anxiety, leaving me feeling almost ghost-like, unrecognisable to myself, like a different person, which led me to foolishly believe -maybe that was who I was.

During those years before the anti-depressants, I had this constant feeling in my head -it was like sinking slowly into this dark, bottomless pit of tar. It aimed to fill every pore of me within itself, to mesh with me till I became indistinguishable from it. Other times it felt like dead weight, hanging off the edge of my shoulders, which made daily life more tiring. My previously notorious grins and abundance of energy became half-hearted smiles and long sighs.

Most people don’t really notice they’re depressed, but it doesn't always mean ‘just being sad’.
More commonly, it can manifest itself as reckless behaviour, taking drugs, agitation or even just sleeping a lot more. Kind of as an over compensation for what’s going on inside.

For me it was a lot of things, I was mostly wired, anxious, and had insomnia with its effects fuelling each other like lighter fluid. Until one day I just had this overwhelming ‘moment’ where I was just like

“Fuck”.

These moments don’t necessarily have to be something major; people in real life and online usually say it’s something small like dropping a spoon or spilling coffee that just sends you spiralling down.

My moment was around when a new album came out for ‘American Pleasure Club’, I wasn’t familiar with the previous works of the artist so it was kind of my first dive and fortunately for me, it was amazing.
I banged out ‘This is heaven and I’d die for it’ every chance I’d get, it’s a catchy song that likes to play in your head.

A week or so later I was coming back home from school one day on the upper deck of a 90 bus via Northolt. I did the usual.
Pull out the headphones, find the album, put in the headphones, then I played the song and was immediately brought to tears. This song I had listened to on repeat since it came out had now become the saddest song I’d ever heard and just sent me spiralling down, but at the same time made me realise that I really had deeper issues I wasn’t aware of. I needed help.

The thing with depression is I tend to forget what it feels like when I’m out of it, which is weird considering when I’m in it, it’s all I can feel.
A year later I can reflect these feelings through my music, I’ve listened to numerous bands like Citizen, Turnover, Foxing and Hibou which have touched perfectly on their emotions through their music. For me, music is my saviour, my knight in shining armour. My transparency used to mean how invisible I felt, my solitude in my fight against my mind; and now it's my attempt to be as honest as I could possibly be, to not be afraid to talk.

I make music so someone else could one day relate to it and discover something about themselves. Lives are lost to suicide every day and in another timeline that could’ve been me, but I wanted to keep fighting so more people can keep talking.

lyrics

Delve into the mirror,
What you see is who i am
Transparent as I’ll ever be

Sunder between man and soul
The killing of the latter -half
An elephant without the room

And it changes when the night comes
As the tides turn from the hunt down
respite is all, is all, is all id ever need

It haunts my dreams
My dreams
My dreams
My dreams

Painted by the lamp shade
Fingers resting on the counter
As I exhale a tirade
Transparent as I’ll ever be

The ghost, that haunts me
The one i see with my eyes wide open
And in my head
Calls to me another time,

It haunts my dreams
My dreams
My dreams
My dreams
My dreams

credits

released December 28, 2018

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Whitelands London, UK

Whitelands is Etienne, Jagun, Vanessa and Michael

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