Sunday 7 July 2013

Looking back I should have been looking forward...

I just finished writing the script for my first Youtube video.... blog...vlog...thing...whatever, it's all a lie anyway! Because it's not my first Youtube video, not even my second! No sir! My first video was completed  back in those hazy autumn days of 2006...that is a long time ago, nearly seven years....and there's a good reason for that. See, life is shit. Well, no, that's not fair, life is what you make of it and I made shit pie, then ate that shit pie and chased it down with a nice fizzy cup of shit-ade. I didn't mean to, it's just....depression is an odd thing, it can hit a person for no real reason and suddenly everything you do is a fuck up. That girl smiled at you, just an innocent smile, but you say nothing, you internalise it, "you should have said something, anything! Why didn't you! Now you're going to die alone!" You apply for a job, one of the hundreds, if not thousands all gunning for that same position, you don't get it, you don't even hear back "I'm so fucking unemployable, what's the point of even trying, may as well just wallow in my own filth." (And wallow I most certainly did...) The store was out of those certain cookies you like...."WHOLE FUCKING WORLD'S AGAINST ME! I SWEAR TO GOD!" It's just small things, silly ridiculous things, but here's the thing....when you've got nothing going for you, the small things become big things because they are basically all you have...it's like, have you ever been talking to a person and they just won't shut up about that one scene in a movie, just going on and on about the deep symbolism, the fantastic use of cinematography, the brilliant usage of differing shades of lighting and how each actor embodied, perfectly, the message that the scene was trying to convey to the audience....or whatever, pick your own example, the point is they saw it as the awe-inspiring show-piece of cinematic history...you thought it was a pretty nifty fight scene (does anyone still use that word...nifty??? if not, I'm bringing it back!). The rest of the movie to them was a by-the-by event, it framed the scene, rather than the scene being simply a facet of the larger movie..

...and that's what depression is like, the little things that may seem inconsequential to others are massive to the depressed person. It doesn't start off big though, no, what tends to happen is that it'll start off small and it will spiral downwards. Pretty soon the original thing, that trigger, is lost entirely and the depression is basically a self sustaining vortex of mental anguish and suffering...and you can't just click out of it, it's not something you can control...and when you're stuck in it, you really are stuck, because when you are depressed, you don't see any way out of it...there's no shining doorway showing you out of the depression, if someone is offering you a hand, you can only reach up to swat it away because what is the point....

That was me, from about the age of 13/14 to 23...I really thought like that, most of the time...I tried to get out of the state I was in, when I was in school it wasn't so bad, I had school-work to occupy my time with and computer games outside of that. I went to Sixth form and had a bad year overall and then the course was cancelled at the halfway point, and remember how I said someone with depression internalises shit? I tried to play it off, get back on track, went onto college but I just couldn't hack it. The failures of the previous year just kept gnawing and gnawing at me to the point where I just didn't get out of bed in the end. I couldn't. I'd lay there, for days at a time, only getting up to go the toilet or eat. 

I tried going back to college the next year, but of course....I now had the failing of two years eating away at me, and I dropped out pretty quickly again. I got money from this compensation claim (I was run over as a child, it was kind of mentally scarring...what, with seeing my foot dangling from my leg, hanging on literally by an inch of flesh) and I figured "hey, you know what, I could put this money to good use and make something of myself!" Only kidding! I went out and straight up murdered my liver almost every day for six months. And bought random bits of shit, as though the material possessions could somehow cover up the hollowness I felt inside....

Which leads me back to the beginning of my short, yet rambling tale. I bought a video camera. It was a whim purchase and to be honest, I think I may have still been drunk from the night before. But I bought it and some editing software and decided that yes, this is what I want to do, I want to make movies and put them up on this new(ish...what, it was 2006, Youtube only appeared in 2005!) website called Youtube, make a name for myself and escape the sorry world of crushing depression I was living in...In case you've not made the connection yet....that didn't come to pass...see, for a long time, I blamed my friends for it, initially they were all for it, but then their interest turned to apathy, and then straight up refusing to help me and that's whatever you know, but I realised not too long ago that it wasn't fair of me to blame them....see, it was my dream, not theirs...and I did nothing to pursue it. As soon as they said no, I just thought "well, I can't do fuck now" and gave it up....my blaming them internally was just an excuse for not trying, because I didn't want to add another thing to my list of failures, I didn't want another thing to spend my nights awake thinking about and cursing the existence of....of course, I did, because that's not how the mind works ("why didn't you keep at it?!" my brain would say, because he's a prick) .

I still internalise shit, I think everybody does (at least I hope so, not because I'm mean but because if I am going to be crazy, I'd rather everyone else be as well) and I still go on the depressive spirals, where I feel like nothing I ever do will ever be good enough and that there's no point in really trying...but I don't know, I'm doing better now simply because I am doing something, these blogs, the videos I'm working on, college last year and uni this year, it's the goals of working, doing something I really enjoy, that are keeping me up there, you know? And I guess that, overall, it's much better to internalise those good feelings than the other ones, later taters. 

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