From DOOM to DIABLO!

Doom!

DOOOOOOOM!

Being found out

In his second autobiography, The Fry Chronicles, Stephen Fry expands upon the fact that he experienced rather a peculiar thing when he first came to the University of Cambridge, where he attended Queens' College. Namely, the defeating feeling that he would, at any time, be "found out".

This, he explains, had no relation to any fear of people realizing that he was homosexual, nor that he had a history of crime and imprisonment. Neither of those seemed to bother him as much as the real fear; that he would be "found out", and I realize the use of quotation marks will at some point begin to annoy, as being a big, fat, pretentious fraud. Surely, at some point, people would come up to him and question him about his knowledge of the great minds of the world, or theories of which he had never heard, and he'd be exposed. It would turn out that it had all been a mistake, he wasn't supposed to be there at all.

Although he never attributes this to his cyclothymia, that is the particular flavour of bipolar, or manic depressive, disorder from which he suffers, I cannot help but feel it is an odd coincidence.

There I go again, being melodramatic. Oh, how well his words suit my life, 'tis as if he was writing about me!

Bollocks, the lot of it. I might just as well have an emo haircut and listen to The Cure. In fact, if I were you, I'd stop reading right this instant. Go head, leave me to my arrogant wallowing.

Is he gone? Good, I hate that guy.

So anyway, I do not mean to say that his situation is directly applicable to mine. I only wish it to serve as a means of introducing the concept of this fear, which I do indeed share.

It might be at work, where I languish in fear that everyone will realize that I'm simply not good enough at what I do. I bring nothing to the table, so why am I even there? Someone more suitable would do it better!

In private, I cannot shake the feeling that people think I'm an arsehole. An annoying, self-centered twat. They'd rather not see me at all.

To be honest, my fear actually has less to do with a sincere beliefs that people holds these views of me, than that they should. 'tis oh so easy to dismiss the views of others. "Oh, they're just jealous because I'm so amazing!", or "They're simply arseholes themselves!". It's much harder to dismiss your own views. My friends don't say they don't like being around me, I tell myself that they should.

I can hardly imagine that anyone has scrapped more recordings of music they've made because they suck. Alright, I may be able to imagine it, but don't let that disrupt my hyperbole, please.

And they're not good enough because I'm not good enough, or at least that's what my head is telling me.

I'm not saying this to garner sympathy. Not that a single person will believe that, but I'm more interested in getting people to understand depression.

In vino veritas

Last night, the missus and I went to a strange place nextdoor to one of those old men's fellowships that dot the city of Örebro, and attended a wine and cheese tasting.

It was far less pretentious than I had feared it would be, and something has to be said of a sommele...somi...wine expert who manages to talk about the qualities of fine wine without making you want to punch him very hard in the face.

Unfortunately, it was entirely impossible to avoid the fact that the topic of the whole affair was wine. In fact, it was all that the cheese could do to reduce the flavourly impact of precisely those qualities in wine for which I care the very least.

I can not with any honesty say that this event in any way caused an epiphany in me, or for that matter impacted my view or preference with regards to wine in any way, shape, or form.

Indeed, give me a box of Barefoot White Zinfandel Rosé, and I'm as happy a camper as can be.

Good night.

A return, I suppose

I can't lie. Alright, that's not entirely true. I can lie, as in I am perfectly capable of speaking or writing something which is to my knowledge not true. I have reservations about such untruths, but they are not of such a pathological character that they would actually prevent me from lying when the case is minor and for all intents and purposes marginal in importance.

What I meant to say is that I won't lie. Not that I won't lie at any point ever in the future, mind you, simply that I will not lie in the statement I am about to make.

Maybe that was already clear.

Either way, the last month and a half has been terrible. Life has been one huge embuggerance of absolutely exaggerative proportions.

Such is the beautiful world of depression. It can pretty much be summed up by the notion of a constant fear that you'll be fired because sooner or later you'll be found out as utterly useless.

I have taken to writing, thought clearly not in this blog, but rather a fantasy story. To say that I did so as a form of self-administered therapy would not only be highly inaccurate, but, much more damning, vain. My reason for reason was simply a desire to make up stories of whatever the hell I wanted, with twists, themes and characters that interest me.

In a bout of writer's block, however, I did resort to an attempt at channeling my desperation, frustration and self-contempt into my writing. The results were...interesting, and not very encouraging. I decided to abandon such a writing technique in the future.

To be quite frank, this will have to do. I grow weary for now. We'll see what updates I'll be able to muster in the future.

Svart Hund

Folk gillar att beskriva depression som en stor svart hund som följer en, eller något sorts sådant struntprat.

Depression är ingen hund. Metaforen är i sig helt meningslös. På vilket sätt skulle just en svart hund beskriva depression? Vad är de mest kända karaktärsdragen hos en hund? Kärleksfull? Trogen? Lättlärd? Vad i hela värden har en hund med depression att göra?

Depression är ingen hund. Det är ingen separat entitet som följer efter dig hela tiden. Du kan inte peka på depressionen och säga "Där har du det som gör att mitt liv suger".

Om det vore det så vore det fantastiskt! En svart hund som följer efter dig vart du än går? Där har vi något man kan bekämpa. Bara att göra sig av med den svarta hunden så är det klappat och klart!

Men depression är ingen hund. Depression är en del av mig. Inte ens en diskret del, det är sammanvävt med min hela karaktär. Allt jag gör, tänker, och säger är genom depressionen. Det är ett karaktärsdrag. Man kan vara lojal, optimistisk, intelligent, och/eller deprimerad.

Vad orsakar depressionen? Ingenting! Jag har ingenting som orsakar det. Det är en tråd i en komplicerad väv, och det finns inget som kan ta bort den tråden. En tråd som många andra, och man kan precis lika lite säga var den kommer ifrån som man bara kan ta bort den.

Händelsevis så är jag inte nöjd med detta inlägg. Jag hade för avsikt att fippla med det i minst en vecka till för att göra det perfekt. Men en del av min rehabilitering är att kunna säga "Fuck it, that'll do!".

Så, fuck it, that'll do!

PS. Depression är ingen jävla hund! DS

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