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It’s that time of the month again, and I don’t mean my period. Depression, as I experience it, works like karma. For a month or two I’m happy, calm, stable, fun, and confident that I can take on all the curveballs life throws at me. Then the depression gets triggered by a minor disappointment, or something as arbitrary as the way shadows fall on a building. For about three to four weeks I move around in a zombie-like state punctuated by the occasional crying jag. Then, just as suddenly as the depression started, I bounce back into my “normal”, relatively happy self. Rise, wash, repeat.

At the moment I’m going through one of those downs and it’s gotten so bad that I actually cried in public no less than three times this week. My friends say they’ve seen me in worse shape before, so I guess there’s no reason for me to panic. It’s just one of those things I have to go through. Of course, it doesn’t make the present any less awful for me.

I noticed something interesting about this particular down though: my musical taste expanded to accommodate classic rock and folk music. Well okay, maybe it has something to do with the fact that the most depressing songs (in my opinion) fall under those genres. If you listen to most the sad songs made over the last five years, they’re usually about getting screwed over by love. Nobody sings about getting screwed over by life anymore. I don’t want to hear songs about getting dumped because I don’t have a broken heart; I have a broken soul. Or at least, that’s what it feels like. I wish I had a broken heart because at least I can point out where the problem lies. But I don’t even have the luxury of blaming some stupid boy for this horrible, inexplicable sadness I’m going through at the moment.

Because writing about depression is getting old, I figured I’d share what I think are the five most depressing songs I know. I’ve arranged them in ascending order, from the song that make me think about difficult but not entirely unpleasant things, to the song that I would most likely play whilst committing suicide, if I were actually suicidal. Which I am not.

You’re A Big Girl Now by Bob Dylan

The song in itself is not about sadness per se, but title was enough to make my heart stop for a moment. It’s a statement of a fact that I’ve been trying hard not to think of these days: you’re a big girl now. That alone is enough to make me panic and feel so goddamn old.

Landslide by Fleetwood Mac

Every line in Landslide is a reflection of my life and the things I had to face during the past year–from the time I broke up with my unreasonably jealous and posessive ex (I took my love, I took it down and Well I’ve been afraid of changing / cause I’ve built my life around you) to the reality I’m facing now (Children get older / I’m getting older too), and the fears I have about growing up (Can the child within my heart rise above / Can I sail through the changing ocean tides / Can I handle the seasons of my life). I go through a strange mixture of nostalgia and apprehension about the future whenever I listen to this song.

Time Has Told Me by Nick Drake

Time Has Told Me sounded like green fields and blue skies when I first heard it. Then Nick Drake started singing about how time has told him that you’re a rare rare find, a troubled cure / for a troubled mind, and the floodgates opened. I’m far from ready to be in a serious relationship, but there are moments where can’t help but wish I had someone who’d be the troubled cure for my troubled mind. It’s an incredibly stupid thing to wish for, really. I know that all the “I love you’s” and sweeping romantic gestures in the world won’t make the sadness go away. But sometimes, I can’t help thinking that it’d be nice to have someone who’d tell me that I’m pretty, someone who’d hold my hand while I fall asleep, someone I can take with me when I get tickets for two.

I quickly kill that thought with the notion I’d probably make the worst girlfriend in the world because I’d end up using him as an emotional and physical punching bag, and that’s not a very nice thing to do to someone.

Dust in the Wind by Kansas

Do I really need to explain why this is the last song you want to play when you’re really really down? I always hear this song on the radio but only recently did I pay attention to the lyrics and man. If all we are is dust in the wind, I’m surprised people aren’t committing suicide left and right.

Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley

I’ve yet to hear a Jeff Buckley song that reminds me of chirping birds and sunny days; what I imagine instead is someone slitting their wrists in a tub of warm water. Out of all his songs, Hallelujah is the most beautiful and the most depressing. It’s not so much the lyrics that drags me down like a rock in still water; it has something to do with the way Buckley sings, the arrangement of the guitar, the overall mood it sets. The song is pure sadness, from the heavy sigh at the start to the very last chord.

Of course I can’t discount the allusions the song makes to love. The line And love is not a victory march / It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah kills me every time I hear it. Today, for instance, I had Hallelujah playing on repeat during the cab ride home. When Buckley sang that line, I got slapped by an epiphany so awful that I started crying. I’m not going to bother explaining the epiphany in detail because no matter how I phrase it, it’s going to end up sounding completely ridiculous. Well, okay, it has something to do with how it’s easy for people to forget other people, and for all I know everyone I love has already forgotten me. Or is on their way to forgetting me. And it’s pointless to make new friends and to love people because I am going to die alone. Something like that.

One of the functions of music is that it should reflect the mood that you’re in. Music should inspire you and make you want to pick up your guitar and write something just as beautiful. Hallelujah is a dangerous song because it doesn’t do any of those wonderful things for me. I just end up getting terrible epiphanies that make me spiral downwards until I am quite literally immobilized by pain.

These old-school songs echo sadness and similar emotions in a manner that I rarely see in songs written today. The problem, however, is that they’re so dead-ended. Maybe it must have been all those drugs that they were taking, but whatever happened to the part where everything’s going to be kind of sort of okay after a while? Are we all going to be depressed, caught in landslides, crying broken hallelujahs, and searching for troubled cures forever? Because that’s the message that I seem to be getting.

I’ve always believed that if something you want doesn’t exist, then make it exist. Perhaps someday I shall write semi-depressing, semi-uplifting songs about how everything sucks but that’s okay because good things eventually come to those who are sad, if they’re not too sad to realize the good things when they happen. Hmm. Maybe I’ll give it a shot right now.