I’ve been suffering from depressions my whole life. In my youth I could get terrible panic attacks, feeling like everything around me was an empty shell. For years I had recurring dreams about the buildings around me being sets, just walls with nothing behind them. I guess this was a projection of myself, living in a small backward thinking town like Östersund. My freedom came when I moved and learned to see beyond those small-minded people and their walls stopping me from being creative. I visited a psychotherapeut for two years, after having thoughts of suicide. I actually left my apartment and left to go down to the train tracks. But I passed the tracks and sat down by the lake instead, looking at the water. And felt very peaceful.
Trapped is the word that comes to mind, trapped in a world where I didn’t belong. Trapped in a city where it was told that there was no hope, that I shouldn’t dream about doing something I really wanted to. I worked at a terrible life-sucking company for a few years, after abandoning the media career I started directly after school. During the boring years there I started to plan my escape. I used my charm, I used my smile, and made them transfer me to Stockholm. They payed for the trip, the whole operation of moving - and then I suffered for a few years at that office until I escaped a second time, starting my life as a freelancer.
In 2007 I met the man I’m still living with, a fantastic human being named G. Well, his name isn’t G, but I call him that and many others around me also. I found my soul mate, that special person who loved me as the person I am, who didn’t try to change me. We’ve never had a quarrel during these years (knock on wood!) and it’s because we understand each other. That’s a rare form of human to encounter nowadays. We’ve been to China, Thailand, Cambodia and Japan together. It’s the only person I love to go on an adventure with. I hope it will happen many times more.
These things: love, a career I can stand and friends that I feel like me and accept me is the key to why I live today. It’s been about finding myself, trying to not listen to people who just want to vomit their opinion and listen to myself. The work with myself have been terribly slow. But small things, like growing a cool mustache or living completely open as gay wouldn’t have been possible in Östersund without people thinking you’re trying to be someone special, someone better than them. I never heard “That’s so cool” about my hobbies, like movies, magic and acting, in Östersund. But I’ve heard it many times in Stockholm. It’s a big place compared to other cities in Sweden, and people are more open-minded. That helped me a lot.
I’ve been ashamed many times for my obsessiveness of collecting movies. I’ve felt shallow, stupid, childish - an idiot for enjoying exploitation, horror, mainstream flops or movies and TV-shows obviously aimed at children (Tokusatsu for example), and still feel it from time to time. I want to be a normal bloke, a mainstream dude who watched Swedish cop-shows and the Eurovision song contest, who celebrates christmas and appreciate the little things in life, like breeding kids and getting a driver’s license. I’ve become none of that. And that makes me sad sometimes. Because I want to be like everyone else. I’m not saying the form of life I’m living is rare, there’s a huge community of people like me out there, but a minority is always a minority.
I’ve decided to stop blogging so many times. I’ve decided to throw away (not give away) my collection of movies more times than I can count. I’ve planned to start laughing at the same shit like everyone else, to always pretend to be happy when I meet people. But it never worked out in the end. I’m always back in the saddle, writing about flicks no one plans to see in texts very few people’s gonna read.
Looking back at my life so far and the interests I have I’ve come to believe I have some kind of syndrome, maybe I’m an aspie deep inside. Not to the extremes, but I notice myself have the same form of thinking as my friends who have the same thing going on. But I will always be a very emotional person, strong emotions that sometimes takes over.
What do I want to say with this? I’m not sure. But one thing might be that if you feel shit, don’t stress. Let the way back life take some time. If you’re stressing it, pretending too much, it will bite you in the ass. Then when the time is ripe, take that step - which probably will make you sad and depressed for a while - and abandon all the things you thought was good for you. That small town. That big town. Those friends that stopped having contact with you after you moved away. Fuck them.
It’s your life. It might not be easy, but it’s a life you can control if you want to.
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