Fuck Yeah JM SoCo Tattoos

himynameisamanda:

I can’t believe I got this tattoo 6 months ago and never made a post about it. I’ve always had a love for Andrew McMahon/Jack’s Mannequin/Something Corporate. I was diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder and Panic Disorder in April 2010. For the most part, therapy helped me a lot; I learned things that would help me in situations that I couldn’t handle, things like simply excusing myself from a situation and walking away physically to allow myself to walk away mentally and emotionally. Last year, my senior year in high school, was not the best… my parents filed for divorce and I found myself in a government class that I simply could not handle. It sounds silly now, but it was one of the most anxious times of my life. You see, we’d have to prepare to answer really hard questions about politics and history (not my forte at all) and then we’d have to know extra info about it for follow up questions (the worst) that he’d ask. We wouldn’t know the follow up questions beforehand, which really made me anxious. If we did not talk, our group would do poorly and the individual that didn’t talk would get a c or d or something stupid like that. The first time we went, I didn’t talk. I couldn’t talk. The air was so thick you could cut it. I could not breathe and I felt like the walls were closing in on me. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t do anything. So I just didn’t speak. Feeling completely shitty about myself, I went to my locker after class (trying to still keep in my anxiety), when I heard this girl talking about me and how I’m an idiot for not talking and how I ruined our group’s chances at winning. Yeah. Almost every day, test or not, I’d feel extreme anxiety right there, quietly in front of everyone. To avoid the humiliation I felt during the first few tests, I realized that I needed to prepare myself; I started listening to Into the Airwaves by Jack’s Mannequin. Every morning before school, I’d listen to that song to remind myself I had to make it though the day. “It’s gonna be a hard day so hang on, don’t panic. Don’t panic, there simply is no need.” I found myself writing “don’t panic” on my right wrist (I’m left handed) every morning before class. During one of my presentation-based government tests, I felt myself unable to speak again and I felt the onset of a panic attack. Ready to give up, I vividly remember looking down at my wrist and I saw those words—I heard the lyrics. Don’t panic. And for the first time, I didn’t panic and I was able to do what needed to be done.



I got this tattoo (the Jack’s Mannequin symbol) in place of “don’t panic.” To be honest, I didn’t want people looking at my wrist and questioning why I felt the need to get that permanently tattooed on my body. I don’t need to explain myself. Whenever someone asks, I say “it’s just a star” but in reality, it kind of saved my life.