The Day I Always Feared

For aslong as I’ve suffered from severe depression and chronic low-self esteem I always knew that there was a distinct possibility that as I got more and more unwell and as my looks went passed a certain threshold of ugliness that I may one day just never leave the house.  Well over the past couple months that’s pretty much what has happened, with the only exception being to go to the doctors for my medication and the odd late night drive.  At the time of writing this I just can’t see myself going out in public.  The Doctor’s trips involve very little interaction, a maximum of 10 mins in the waiting room and even these are proving extremely difficult for me.  I have one tomorrow and I really cannot be fucked going at all, the only reason I do go is because abruptly stopping anti-depressants can cause all sorts of horrific side effects.

The weather here has been sunny the last few days and that brings with it a lot of bad things for me.  First off, good weather tends to make people happy and want to go out and do things and the fact that I can’t hurts a lot.  Secondly due to the fact I find my body fucking repulsive, I tend to cover up, so when it get’s warm it’s harder to do this.  You won’t ever see me in just a t-shirt and as such the warm weather keeps me trapped indoors.

I’m no stranger to being trapped in doors, I’ve spent much of the past 5 years indoors, and I’m certainly no stranger to extended periods of not leaving the house, sometimes for months on end.  I’m sure I don’t need to explain why this isn’t healthy.

So back to my initial point, and the reason I’m writing this….what the fuck am I supposed to do?  People do not understand where I’m coming from with this because the thought of never going outside seems ridiculous to them, it’s just something they take for granted.  It’s no coincidence that this downturn has coincided with my appearance getting worse, I’m not going to allude to what exactly those things are because I’d find that somewhat mortifying, and I’m still struggling to come to terms with how I currently look.  I mean I loathed how I looked 5 years ago, but now it’s night and day.  That’s one thing I’ve learned, there is no such thing as rock bottom, not in terms of my self-esteem or in terms of the different facets of my illness.  I’ve often thought “fuck, well at least things can’t get any worse”, but they can and they most definitely do.  While I respect optimists, I’m a realist and the reality is that some people never get to be happy and suffer their whole lives.  This idea of that we all get this storybook ending is crap, sure that is the case for some people but for a lot of people it isn’t, sadly we very rarely hear about these people.  They suffer in silence.

This realisation that the day I always feared is now here has left me utterly dejected. I’m not sure whether to call myself suicidal or not as I’ve never attempted to kill myself and I certainly don’t want to die, but I’ve had the thought of suicide on my mind almost everyday for half a decade and in the past few months these thoughts have intensified, naturally due to the fact that I really am facing a life indoors, a life not worth living.  Even if I picture myself outdoors I just think to last year when I was going out a bit in an attempt to feel something good, and there was just nothing but overwhelming bad.  That’s the thing with depression, even good things make you feel awful.

So what options do I have? I stay inside and hide away, which will eventually wear me down as I waste away and probably take my own life, or it goes on for years, I waste away even more both physically and mentally, become even more unhealthy, possibly see my parents pass away and then I either take my own life or I die due to being either hugely unhealthy or from having nobody to look after me.  These things do happen, agoraphobics often die alone.  Truly awful.

The other option is to go outside and be in places that make me hugely uncomfortable and only serve as reminders of the hatred I have for myself and my appearance.  Sure I’d be active but as I’ve found out only too well, just because I’m out doing things and being around people it changes nothing for me, and in fact just rams home how unhappy I am and makes me feel like me on this planet just wasn’t meant to be.  I really wish I could explain better why an active life would just be as awful for me as staying inside all the time and never leaving.  Essentially they are just two sides of the same coin, both equally awful.  The only other option is the unthinkable, I hate that it’s an option, but the longer I suffer the more real it becomes.

I’m really sorry if you know me and found this hard to read.  I’m not even sure what I was trying to achieve, I always get sidetracked when I write and never know how much detail to include, whether to focus on one thing or open up and discuss every last detail of my illness, which is just an impossible task as it’s unbelievably complex.  I just needed to try write something, anything, because I am beyond scared.

Heavy Rain

Anybody who follows me on twitter will probably have noticed a whole barrage of tweets yesterday about the game Heavy Rain, all of which were about how much I was enjoying the game.  Well I finished the game today and thought I should post some of my thoughts.  I’ll also talk about some of the things mentioned about the game in the press (good and bad) and all of this will be spoiler free.

I played the game over two days, the first I put in a 10 hour stint and the second, a couple hours more to finish it.  I feel that I should focus on the first day as the impact of the game was much more evident and it made me forgot about real life for most of the day, which is massive, as anybody who knows about my personal problems will attest to.  To be able to zone out of my world and be enveloped by another, says a lot about this game.

First of let me start by saying I absolutely loved the game, it was exactly what I had hoped for since it was announced and in some cases so much more.  As mentioned above, yesterday I was raving about the game, it had me gripped and totally engrossed by what was going on.  From the opening moments it felt like something truly special, something unlike anything I had ever experienced before.  The game does start out very slow but I really liked that, these days people are just too hungry for in-your-face action right from the get go.  I believe that the slow pacing is one of the main reasons that I got to know the first lead character and not only that but it allowed me to get used to the controls.  The controls will be loved by some, and no doubt hated by others.  They are based around quicktime events, you essentially input the controls as they appear on the screen.  No doubt some will deem this to be boring and think they aren’t involved enough but personally I think it works brilliantly and is implemented with such style that it just kinda feels natural.  You still have control of your character though, you move him or her around using the R2 button and then you interact with stuff via the on screen prompts when you walk past something of interest.  Another thing I loved was that sometimes your finger dexterity was really tested and that usually matched up with an equally hard task that your character was performing on screen, in fact a lot of the actions matched their on-screen counterparts.

There’s no doubt in my mind that some people will play this game and say that it’s “boring” or “repetitive” and things like that but again I think that’s due to most of said people wanting to flying ninja kick the bad guys, while shooting them with a photon laser gun, on top of a speeding train, in space etc……and that’s where this game differs from most.  This game is about subtleties, subtleties in mood, subtleties in music and subtleties in character interaction.  It has a distinctly dark film noir feel to it.  That’s not to say it’s all quiet all the time of course, there are action scenes a plenty but I definitely appreciated the softer tender moments.

The game was billed as being based around choices and although it’s hard to say how much my choices effected the overall outcome without multiple playthroughs, I can safely say I did feel like my choices mattered and that they tested me morally.  So often I genuinely felt panic trying to decide which option to choose.  At one point I made a snap decision and immediately felt EXACTLY what the character was feeling on screen.  That to me was very cool, and not something I was used to feeling whilst playing a game.  At times it made you feel tense, sometimes made you panic and sometimes it made you empathise with the character.  It was always making you feel something.

It’s hard to not mention the look of the game so…em…that’s exactly what I’m going to do.  The graphics are great and at times they look nothing short of unbelievable.  Also need to mention that I thought the actors did a brilliant job of making their respective characters come alive.  They really made the most of the motion capture and it made the emotions seem real, as opposed somewhat wooden as a lot of games do.

As for the story, well I liked it and thought it was a pretty cool idea.  I’d say that the first 90 percent of the experience is the best though.  Not that the ending disappointed as such, just that I felt like it was a little bit weaker than the rest.  There’s been much said about the story and a HUGE amount said about the plot holes.  I didn’t noticed too many whilst playing to be honest but again I think that’s down to how much I was invested in the characters and the “experience” of playing a game so fresh.  Was it an oscar winning story, no of course not, but in comparison to most games these days it was pretty damn good.  Now back to the plot holes.  I had to look online for them and when I read about them I did kinda think “yeah, that doesn’t really make sense” and one article I read pointed out so many plot holes that it was actually quite laughable.  There did seem to be one major plot hole but I went back and replayed the chapter and realised that actually, it’s not, it’s a little sketchy yes, but it’s not a massive “this fucks everything up” kinda thing.  I digress though, as I could go on for hours talking about them but the bottom line was that they didn’t ruin the game for me.  One other thing I must mention was that the game did freeze at one point and I had to revert to any earlier chapter.  I had read that some people had been having this problem but it only happened to me once and I only had to replay a small part so it was only a small nuisance.

Heavy Rain is a great game and one that you ought to try out as it’s an experience unlike any other.  Sure when you put it under a microscope and analyse it to a ridiculous degree you start to notice flaws and the story does start to fall apart a little but for me it just had so much impact on that first day of playing that I can’t help but say that this game is incredible.

Braid

“Tim is off on a search to rescue the Princess. She has been snatched by a
horrible and evil monster. This happened because Tim made a mistake.”

“Not just one. He made many mistakes during the time they spent together, all
those years ago. Memories of their relationship have become muddled, replaced
wholesale, but one remains clear: the princess turning sharply away, her braid
lashing at him with contempt.”

“He knows she tried to be forgiving, but who can just shrug away a guilty lie,
a stab in the back? Such a mistake will change a relationship irreversibly,
even if we have learned from the mistake and would never repeat it. The
princess’s eyes grew narrower. She became more distant.”

“Our world, with its rules of causality, has trained us to be miserly with
forgiveness. By forgiving them too readily, we can be badly hurt. But if we’ve
learned from a mistake and became better for it, shouldn’t we be rewarded for
the learning, rather than punished for the mistake?”

“What if our world worked differently? Suppose we could tell her: ‘I didn’t
mean what I just said,’ and she would say: ‘It’s okay, I understand,’ and she
would not turn away, and life would really proceed as though we had never said
that thing? We could remove the damage but still be wiser for the experience.”

“Tim and the Princess lounge in the castle garden, laughing together, giving
names to the colorful birds. Their mistakes are hidden from each other, tucked
away between the folds of time, safe.”

…..who says computer games can’t have meaning? The above is some text taken from the downloadable game Braid.  I thought it was very poignant and wanted to share it.

The Invention of Lying

What would the world be like if we couldn’t lie? It’s such an interesting question and one that this film serves to answer.  It’s set in a world where humans can’t lie, it doesn’t exist, until one day a man called Mark Bellison discovers he can.  I won’t go into too much detail about the plot, I’ll let you watch it for yourself, but I’m gonna write about the scene that stuck out to me and also talk about a few of the things I thought whilst watching because it is really thought provoking.

<some slight spoilers after this point but nothing that will ruin the film>

The main scene that really struck me was the scene where Mark’s mother is dying in hospital.  She tells her son that she fears death and eternal nothing-ness.  Mark, who can now lie, decides to comfort her by saying that she is wrong and that we go to our favourite place on earth, where we’re young again and can see everybody who has passed away.  He essentially creates “heaven”.  I found the scene particularly powerful and it made me consider the fact that sometimes, we need to lie.  Some lies serve a purpose and without them the world would just be too cruel and lack hope.  I dunno, I just found that interesting.  There’s another similar example of this where Mark connects with a guy who is suicidal.  He may lie to the man in regards to what he thinks about him but he shows compassion and gives him a sense of purpose and the comfort of having someone care.

To sum up, it was an enjoyable film and I think they did a really great job of showing the audience what the world would be like if we couldn’t lie.  From adverts, to films, to religion.  It was just a really unique idea and they executed it very well.  I recommend you check it out.

A Snowy View

Took this from my window earlier.  Snow covered streets symbolize more than just Christmas to me.  They make me think of family because I have memories of staring out into the cold as a young boy, waiting for people to arrive.  Something about this kind of view really catches me and I can’t really explain it, it’s just linked to so many things.

Christmas is a funny time for me.  It was always my favourite time of year but these days, due to my depression, it has the complete opposite effect on me.  I want to enjoy it and feel happy so much, yet I can’t and that in turn leads to me feeling miserable and very confused in a myriad of ways.  It’s gone in a flash and that’s terrifying.  As always though I’ll try my best to feel something good, anything at all, because the only other option I have is to let my depression win.  It’s taken a lot from me and I know it’s going to be very hard for me these next few days but all I can do is hope for the best.  I have my doubts, but maybe one day I’ll get Christmas (and everything else) back.

Skhizein

Let me start by saying I absolutely love this.  It’s a short film called “Skhizein” by French director Jérémy Clapin.  I did a bit of hunting to find out what the title meant and I found this interview which says:

It’s Greek and it means “split” or “cleave.” The word “schizophrenia” incorporates this. The other half, “phren,” means“spirit.”

You learn something new every day, huh! Anyway, I don’t want to waffle on too much before you’ve watched the film.  It’s 13 minutes long so won’t take up much of your time.  Enjoy!

So what did you think?  I really loved everything about it, from the visual style to the off the wall storyline.  I guess you could take a lot of different things from it but for me a few things came to mind.  They might not be exactly what the director had in mind but here we go.  I felt the story showed that even small changes in life (91 centimeters for example) can really have a big impact on you and the way you live.  Another thing that jumped out to me is how Henry so desperately wanted things to go back to normal, to have his life back.  That’s something I can relate to, I know how it feels to have your life knocked all out of whack.

I guess I want my 91 centimetres back.

I needed to write this down.

I’ve had all the music finished for this one particular song for a few months now and had come up with a tentative set of lyrics and melodies.  The trouble is that although I liked them, they never felt quite right.  I had been battling with myself as to whether I should just go ahead, finish the lyrics and record all the vocals or start from scratch, keep the same melody but write lyrics that had more meaning to me.  Ultimately that’s what’s scary to me, and also very hard.  I want so badly for the words to be steeped in feeling and emotion that I almost make it impossible for me to achieve the level of writing that I want.  In turn making the task of writing lyrics seem even more daunting than it already is.

However, just as I was about to give up today I just started singing random things to this melody, a different chorus melody to the one I was previously using, and it just felt right.  From there I immediately put on my headphones clicked record and started to sing……I loved what came out and it goes with the song so well.  Most importantly though it feels like “me” and it moved me to tears because I was singing about something from inside me, something real.  The words, in places, make no sense but the point is that they helped me capture a mood, a feeling, a sense of something powerful and now I can rework them into something meaningful.  I’m no stranger to this kind of songwriting.  I often come up with my best stuff completely out of nowhere.  I think I’m the type of person who can’t really force music, I just have to wait for that moment and hope that I can make sense of it and capture it.  It’s a pretty frustrating way to write songs but I’m glad that at least every now and then I get an idea out of the blue that inspires me or makes me feel emotional.  I try to make the most of these moments because they can disappear easily and I revert into feeling useless and uninspired again. In fact that’s likely to happen momentarily but let this be proof that every now and again I actually do feel like I have something to offer with my music.