 Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you're well and it's that I want to talk about for the last three years or so in this kind of journey of mine to 100,000 subscribers. I've been saying that at the beginning of every single video and I just wanted to talk about I've sort of thought about making this video for a long time and I've decided now's the time to make it and I know this is not going to be anything to do with music or music production or such so like I'm sorry about that if that's what you're looking for but I wanted to address the question of why do I always say this at the beginning of videos and there's a really good reason for which I which not many people aware of and I don't want to sound pretentious but it's because I really do hope you are well and at the same time I know that many of you are not well I know that many of you are struggling with different aspects of your life and I just wanted to speak with you directly now because I think it's really important in this age of social media to understand that not everything is as it seems and one of the worst things for people when they're going through trouble times especially people with you know trouble times in their mind mental health issues so to speak one of the awful things can be is when you're looking on Facebook and Twitter and everything is that everybody else's life looks like it's in order like they've got it all together like somehow you're the odd one out who can't sort of get your life in order and be happy and I just wanted you to be aware that you're not alone that most people out there either are or have really struggled at some time in their life with getting it together and just being happy and you know functioning really really well you know and so I decided that if it's any help to anybody at all whatsoever that I would tell a little bit of my story and I am talking not about troubles I've faced in my life from you know just physical issues or have you health problems or financial problems that kind of thing but I'm specifically going to address the mental health issues that I've had and I'm going to give you a bit of a story so that you can hopefully understand and yeah understand that not everything's always as it seems now I don't want you to be worried my life is good at the moment and he's really really been especially good for the last three years thank you to everybody who support the channel in that way but it really hasn't always been that way and I know that many of you may look at what someone like me does and think oh you know how does he have it all together is he's got his subscribers he's making music he's got all that gear behind him in the studio you know perhaps you've got no money or an ability to buy gear and let me talk about that a little bit first I've actually spent the majority of my life the vast majority of my life I'm 54 by the way now having really hardly any money not much money at all especially to spend on music gear you know it's been a really recent time and if you look at some of my early videos on the channel I had a lot less gear there but yeah I struggled a lot and a lot of the reasons why I struggled was because I was to have the money to buy gear was because there was lots of other things going on in my life over the last 30 years or more I have suffered and a lot of the time for big chunks of my life with a combination of depression and anxiety I think one of the doctors I saw once said that my depression was a result of my anxiety and let me just kind of give an idea of how that played out for me I suffered a little bit of anxiety when I was a child even as young as 12 years old that kind of thing but something happened to me when I was 22 or 23 years old 22 years old that had an absolutely profound effect on me a massive profound effect on me at that stage I was with my wife we hadn't had a long relationship it was one of those things we decided to get married spontaneously kind of thing as young people do sometimes and then not too long after that we found that she was pregnant and the great news after that was that we found that she was pregnant with twins which was just tremendously tremendously exciting for us now around about six months just over six months into the pregnancy we woke up one night and there was blood everywhere something had gone wrong and so we went to we went to the hospital courses you do it was an emergency and she was taken in and sort of stabilized I guess and then I think it was only maybe a week or two later I was staying at a friend's house and got a phone call late at night and was told come up to the hospital immediately your wife's gonna give birth she's gone into labor as I say for those of you who don't know I'm sure you do but we're gonna normally nine months pregnant six months pregnant going to labor is not good she was 26 weeks pregnant so I went up to the hospital and was taken to a almost like an operating theatre when in there there was two groups of doctors many of them and the next thing I can remember was that there were these two babies really really really small babies I had no idea about these things at the time I was pretty ignorant as young men sometimes are about these things and so I was actually kind of just happy I was I was a father there's these two babies are here they're both my sons but they were very very tiny very very tiny less than a kilogram I seem to remember around about 800 grams roughly both of them 7 to 800 grams very very small indeed and I you know we went ahead and named them and I'll tell you just the music link here is that as a very young man I'd been a big fan of Elvis Presley's and Elvis Presley had had a twin brother who ironically died I guess and his name was Aaron so I'd always had in my head that I liked that name and I was said my first born son will be called Aaron so the first of these two young fellas out of the womb was called Aaron and the other one was called Curtis so time went on and of course they were taken to an intensive care unit and and they were both in incubators you know as they are and it was just they were just very very small it was very obvious that they were tiny and kind of that they really should have died right away to be honest with you they were too small but we were very fortunate at the time that a test was taking place in the hospital for a new kind of treatment called surfactant which was able to mature the lungs of babies very very quickly and so they were given that and they actually did pretty well for a while. Curtis the second born one had lots and lots of problems he had lung collapses he had a hole in the heart lots and lots of problems he was being taken care of a lot very intense we're very very worried about him Aaron my first born son was small but didn't have the same problems at all we did not get the chance obviously to hug them or anything they they stayed in the incubator all the time we did have some hands on and that they encouraged us to you know change their little diapers and you know little bits of care that we could do for them through the holes in the into every we didn't we didn't hold them at all at that stage and then after I know this may seem strange but after around 10 days or so we felt because we were at hospital all the time all the time yeah morning noon night or when we could be we did go home but we were straight back to hospital since we could but after about 10 days we felt we're out of the woods here things are things are not too bad things are looking okay for these guys things it's stable so it's stabilized a fair amount so on that particular on this particular day after 10 days we didn't rush to the hospital we actually went to my parents house and but on the way to the hospital but we went to their house first and my dad cooked us a lovely big English breakfast and we enjoyed that and we felt a little relaxed for the first time since the birth so we then went to the hospital and as soon as we walked into the hospital I mean I can only say that we faced mayhem somebody rushed up to us and said where have you been we've been trying to contact you remember this is the days before mobile phones what have you they said there's a problem and so we went excuse me promise myself I wouldn't do this so we went into the ICU where they were and there was a big big or it seemed to me a crowd of doctors and nurses around Aaron and we didn't know what was going on but it obviously been obviously been some kind of a problem and there was a lot of activity there was a lot of medications being administered there was a lot of fussing around I don't know how long this went on for but me and my wife just stood in the corner of the room just watching and at some point they all stopped all of a sudden everybody stopped and the doctor turned around to me my surname was different back then my surname was Taplan that's a whole other story but the doctor the the main pediatrician there who was dr. Kumar he turned around to me and just looked at me and he said to me um he said mr. Taplan I'm sorry he said mr. Taplan I'm sorry I can't save your son and he said would you like to hold him before he dies and and they took him out and handed him to me and I held him and he died in my arms and life changed in a second you know I went from being a kind of a naive person I guess we're just young just young I hadn't experienced life and and I felt I felt naivety leave my body I don't know how to explain it I I instantly um I handed him after he died to someone and I dropped him on knees I felt the life sucked out of me everybody knows that to lose a child is difficult every parent fears it because they naturally know how difficult it will be and it is but when these things happen to you like when when uh uh something obviously tragic happens to you and you become later depressed or what have you you don't just sit in the corner and be sad sometimes you behave in all kinds of ways which are not very pleasant to be around and I'm just going to hand on heart tell you I don't want to dress this up many times I was not a very pleasant person to be around after that uh it came out um in anxiety big time which then also comes out in anger and depression and I had a lot of love and a lot of good people over the years but um it affected the way I was with my work so I was very unstable in the workplace I was very unstable in relationships whether that was with a partner or whether it was with uh just friends you know um I could have sudden outbursts um very reckless at times with money um all that kind of stuff I don't I'm really pleased I'm not used trying to use this experience of mine as an excuse for bad behavior it's not it's not that at all but I definitely have to be honest and say to you and I know lots of you think I'm a really nice guy and all that and I am but I haven't always been and um and I'm human so as as the years went on just like some of you who are watching who may have all kinds of different reasons why but definitely I knew what depression was that feeling of just not wanting to do anything not wanting to get out of bed not seeing the point in me why I was here all kinds of dark dark thoughts and um I also went through all the cycles yeah I read the books I followed different gurus I followed different ways of thinking went round around those things and and also that was frustrating in itself because you know I was thinking I've tried to do everything here to change the way I think about life and what have you but I'm still going round in circles and still getting depressed and all those kinds of things and uh that kind of stopped around about um I'm going to say about six years ago or so when I'd had enough uh another relationship breakdown had happened not just with a partner but with uh with friends family kinds of people which I was at least partially responsible for if not completely and I felt myself very alone burned had burned all of my bridges uh was very isolated completely alone actually physically and I decided that I couldn't go on living like that so I didn't kill myself obviously but I decided that I had to change not talk about change or think about change or anything but really change the way I was thinking about life as a person and I actually spent a lot of time in isolation I spent a few months in a house completely alone I didn't listen to music I didn't watch tv I didn't do it I was very quiet and learned to be alone which I hadn't coped with before that very well and uh really made some changes about the way I look at life and a lot of it was letting go a lot of loads of it was letting go of ideas it wasn't so much learning new things it's just unlearning a few things so um that happened and over time over many many months I got to a really good place really really good place now I don't want to I don't want to give the impression that I had some sort of epiphany or in a moment of enlightenment because I still have difficult days now of course I do but I don't suffer from depression anymore I get a little bit of anxiety but nothing as bad as I used to um a doctor who I went to see I'll tell you first of all that I I see therapy now whether I see a therapist or what have you as not something I go to necessarily an emergency but something that is uh like you would go to the gym you know I just keep it topped up and I was facing a particular struggle in life uh two or three months ago it's like two or three years ago a little bit after I started the channel and I won't go into the details here because it involves someone and I I can't really tell the story without saying who it is and I don't want to betray their um you know their privacy but uh there was a difficulty happening with someone I thought I mean danger here something could be like it could sort of get me back into my depression so I'll before things get bad I'll go and see someone and chat through things it was a new therapist and it was only at that stage because I was displaying I I do not even in a jokey way but I was displaying some um things that often go with anxiety and that's uh compulsive obsessive disorder um I can be very much like that and I was doing a few things which were taking a lot of my time my day safety measures which were uh becoming a problem so anyway uh they they told me that um that they actually felt a lot of my anxiety over the years um was almost like it wasn't like so much anxiety that I was kind of suffering from PTSD and had never been addressed um over the uh not even the death of my son but the death of the my son in my arms the the physical nature of actually holding your son in your arms as he takes his last breath was I just had I'd always known it troubled me but I hadn't realised how um it made me behave in ways and quite often in ways I'm not very proud of to be honest with you and things you know since before I started the channel have been really fantastic I was concerned it was a concern of mine when I entered into the business or the world of YouTube of how I was going to react to negativity um at times you come under attack as a YouTuber and if you're ever a person who's suffered from anxiety or depression and insecurity then that can be a really problematic thing for you and I do come under attack from different people once in a while it's not very significant because the vast majority of my day spent reading comments of people saying thank you and you know I know that 99.9% of you are that and thank you so much for that by the way it's it's never lost on me and I never get tired of it um but yeah occasionally someone wants to have a go um but there's two levels to that you know I realise that other people also suffer uh from mental health issues and sometimes the way that they vent that is by attacking a YouTuber you know um you know it's a truth in life that as you are perceived as becoming more successful then uh people also become very jealous as well you know does it ever get to me um yes but not in the same way it used to not in the way it used to before that time six years ago when I made some changes it's short lived uh I've got a self-belief in myself I know I'm a good person um even though I do some silly things still once in a while and I just perceive it as their problem you know and I try and have some sympathy for them where I can but mostly I don't entertain it much I don't respond to it um it's their it's their journey and and that's that but that's not the point of this video the point of this video is why do I say at the beginning of every video I hope you're well because I genuinely know what it's like to not be well to be struggling to all of your problems in life have built up to a point where sometimes you can't even function I know what it's like to feel like the black sheep to look out there and see it looks like everyone else is doing so well for themselves that everyone else has got it together you know even I could say you look you got he's got all the gear he's got all the subscribers and that is true that is true that I'm very very very blessed as a person but what I want to say to you just you is it please believe me it will not or does not always need to be like this for you I had decades of it and I found a way past it's so hard I know it's so hard but please don't give up please please please don't give up if it just means if you if you'll just do it for me just keep going for another hour another five hours another day yeah just one day do it for me please because it I know you can feel like you don't have any hope but there's always hope there is there's even though you may not believe it right now there's a way forward and you can do it so yeah that's my message to you to those individuals who are right now in the darkest parts of their life so I'm sorry just to finish off I'm sorry that this has been so far off track of my normal videos and I know some of you you know perhaps would just rather see a cake walk video and I promise I'll get straight back to that right away but I hope that if it helps just one I know this is a cliche but it's just so true if it helps one person then I'm happy I made this video now please I'm just going to be blunt and open about this if you're feeling suicidal if you feel like you want to end your life don't wait reach out for help now reach for help right now okay don't wait till tomorrow I want you to reach for help now so many of you are watching me from so many different countries in the world I can't give you one helpline or what have you I know here in Australia beyond blue is a great organization to reach out for I'm sorry I'm not familiar with the different organizations in the different countries but reach out to one of those organizations if it gets you through another day if it just gives you some inkling of perhaps there's a way forward then I want that for you now okay I want you to one day even if it may be months or years from now to live the most incredible life that I now live where I know I'm valuable I have amazing people who love me and support me I'm not talking about my family and friends you guys too though my subscribers and supporters um I finally believed in who I was and I stopped being trying to be something else for other people and who I was was a guy who likes to talk about making music and a little bit about computers and stuff I dig it I really dig it it's a lot of fun yeah I didn't know that anybody was really going to be interested in my style of talking about that kind of stuff or you know or what I had to say about it but it turned out I'm the luckiest guy in the world because there was at least 100,000 people who thought you know they liked the way I told the stories and so I feel like I'm a lottery winner honestly but I can promise you that a very short period of time ago in my life I was it was it was darkness for me complete darkness you know so please hang in there please do that for me so as I say I'm Mike and I really do hope you're well