Mental health blogger Unwanted Life shares their experience related to trauma, bullying, racism, identity struggles and invalidation by others. As always these are personal accounts and the opinions expressed are from the story sharer. CW: This one references the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder and also has discussions about the work of Marylin Manson:
I had the misfortune of being born in an all-White town in an all-White family but to a Black dad at the dawn of the 80s. As you might be able to guess, I experienced a relentless level of racism and abuse from before I started school until I left my hometown for good at 19.
If it wasn’t my peers racially abusing me, it was the teachers’ turnings a blind eye, blaming me for it, and for a couple of teachers, beating me as well. I was in a situation where I couldn’t win and I couldn’t escape, simply because I was Black.
My mum was of no help either. She was too wrapped up in her faith to care about what happened to me. When I tried to talk to my mum about it, she just brushed it off, like she does everything regarding me. If I had been born White, then my mum’s actions, or lack thereof, wouldn’t have mattered. But because I was Black and society was punishing me for that, I needed that support and then some. But it never came.
Even now, she just doesn’t understand and still dismissed my issues even when my health goes down the toilet. Apparently, I just need to get over it and forget the past. Sage advice, apparently.
Because of my early life experiences, I’d become suicidal by the time I was eight years old, and I was displaying what I soon came to realise with borderline personality disorder long before I became suicidal.
I had problems with managing my extreme emotions and I was reckless because I didn’t care if I lived or died.
Because I was so messed up as a child that my sense of identity was beyond messed up. I spent my school years wishing I was White because if I was White I wouldn’t have had to ensure any of the abuse I went through. I was a lost soul, desperate to find something or someone to connect to. The byproduct of this was a strong people-pleasing tendency and trust issues.
I would make myself the butt of the joke in the hope that I’d be accepted. When they gave me a racist nickname, I’d pretend it didn’t bother me and I’d say as much if I was asked. That was my life. A life that led to me crying over the kitchen sink with a meat cleaver every day, wanting the strength to hack off my own hand in the hopes I’d die.
Because most of my peers either hated me or I didn’t know if I could trust them, coupled with a mum that was happy to neglect my emotional and psychological needs, developed issues.
I developed an unstable sense of identity (I would later be diagnosed as having borderline personality disorder) which worsened my already fragile mental health. Although I didn’t know it at the time, my identity becoming stable would go a long way towards my mental health recovery.
What kick-started my recovery and the stabilisation of my identity and emotions was my friend introducing me to Marilyn Manson’s Antichrist Superstar album. Listening to that album changed my life forever.
For the first time, I connected with something without having to try and make it happen by bending myself into something other people would accept. The raw anger and aggression of the first track, ‘Irresponsible Hate Anthem’, spoke to me in ways I don’t think I can put into words. It was my oasis in a desert of hate and shit.
Alternative music defined who I was quite quickly, in such a way that I could never go back to who I was. It not only helped me manage my mental well-being better and improve my quality of life, but it led to me meeting many great people along the way who accepted me for me.
Before discovering all things metal and alternative, I’d tried connecting with other things, such as reggae. I even listened to Guns N’ Roses and other such rock bands that were big at the time, but I didn’t click with those. Nothing fit as well as metal. Metal spoke to me on so many levels, reasoning with me to my core like nothing else ever has.
From that moment it didn’t matter if I was Black, White, or mixed (which is what I am), because now I was a metalhead. I’ve never been so emotionally moved by such music, music that can enhance my moods or help me change my moods. I’ve loved the music, aesthetic, and everything about the alternative music world ever since I heard that life-changing album.
It wasn’t long before I bought albums by Machine Head, Korn, Cradle of Filth, and all the other great bands I fell in love with. My room then became covered with pictures taken out of Metal Hammer and Kerrang!.
I can’t imagine being any other way and I don’t know how I would have survived without it. Give me baggy black jeans (I was also a skater at the time) and black T-shirts and shirts any day of the week.
The funny thing was, now I’d often get abuse from chavs for being a goth, instead of being Black, which made for a nice change. But I didn’t care. I’d find my people.
It’s just a shame that the origin story of my mental health recovery and my embrace of all things metal has now been muddied by Marilyn Manson’s alleged behaviours. I hope those women get justice.
Metalhead and proud for life
Heavy Metal Therapy 