This is a (hopefully) formal essay about how I feel. In it I explain my feelings to the best of my ability and attempt to explain what they are and where they come from. I myself do not know exactly where my feelings come from, but I do try to make educated guesses. I would assume everyone knows how hard it is to explain your deep emotional feelings to someone when they ask about it. So I hope that me sitting down and thinking about this as I write it all down would clear up most of the confusion I create when attempting to explain to people how I feel. To explain how I feel, how I truly feel, we should first look at the definition of a few words.
depression
- n. The act of depressing.
- n. The condition of being depressed.
- a state of feeling sad.
- a mood disorder marked especially by sadness, inactivity, difficulty in thinking and concentration, a significant increase or decrease in appetite and time spent sleeping, feelings of dejection and hopelessness, and sometimes suicidal tendencies.
- n. An area that is sunk below its surroundings; a hollow.
escapism
- n. The tendency to escape from daily reality or routine by indulging in daydreaming, fantasy, or entertainment.
paracosm
- n. A detailed imaginary world, especially one created by a child.
Now I’m sure everyone has heard of the words “depression” and “escapism” before, so I’ll start with those. Depression is one of those things that people either understand, or don’t. Everyone feels down every now and then, it’s a completely normal thing. You cannot be expected to be happy all the time. If we were happy all the time, the world would be perfect. It’s not. Depression goes further than just feeling down sometimes. It goes way beyond that feeling. If I were to put it into words, this is how I would describe what depression is like:
Imagine you’re suffocating. When you look around you there is nothing. No people, no animals, no plants, no flowers, no wind, not even light. Just emptiness. There is no way out. You wait until your body gives in. But it doesn’t. You try moving, but you do not have the energy to do so. Every single motion costs too much energy. You’re stuck.
This is what people fail to understand. We cannot see a way out. It is the reason why telling a depressed person “just do something that makes you happy,” doesn’t help them. The things that made them happy before, doesn’t make them happy now. And even if it did, they would not have the energy to do it.
How is this connected to the other words, you might ask. Depression, in my experience, usually has a source. This source depends on numerous factors, but mostly on the following three things: Your surroundings, your physical health and your sense of accomplishment. I believe it takes just one of these factors to go wrong for a person to become depressed.
- You could have a really bad situation at home, your father is an alcoholic that beats you every night, your mother is addicted to gambling and neglects you completely.
- You could be in bad physical health, you’re overweight or you’ve just heard you’ve caught a bad disease.
- Or you could feel like you’ve accomplished nothing in life, the things you have accomplished mean nothing and you’ve never done anything significant at all.
They all sound like valid reasons for a person to become depressed. One might sound more valid, but that does not invalidate the others. For me, I believe the source is mainly my accomplishments. I do not feel like anything I’ve done so far has any significant worth at all. If I look back at the last 19 and a half years of my life, I cannot find one thing that I would deem even a slight accomplishment. Even getting my college degree does not feel like an accomplishment to me. I suspect this is because I barely did my best to get it, and pretty much only passed on sheer luck. But this is only a wild guess. Even when thinking about it, I have trouble finding out why I feel about it the way I do. Another big one is that I feel my little brother is ahead of me in life. He’s got a job, an internship he enjoys, an education he likes and a girlfriend he loves. I on the other hand, have one of those. An education I like. But even that I’m starting to doubt. The more time I spend doing it, the less I start enjoying it. But I feel this is mainly because the university I go to is rather… Unprofessional. This I can outline very clearly since it involves telling people about the factual events that happened. I will not go into exactly what happened between the university and me, but I will outline the major points that are making me reconsider my past choices:
- The school is really bad at maintaining a schedule and telling us about it. Whenever a new period starts, until we’re a couple weeks in they are still tinkering with the schedule. Which they had 3-4 weeks of down-time for to fix. Any changes that happen will either be conveyed to us too late or not at all. Here an example: during the startup hour of the last period, we were told we needed to go to another city the next day. We were also told that we will receive the time and place we needed to be there in an email later that day. We never received said email until 4 am the following day.
- The teachers don’t care. In the past, after having asked questions the entirety of the class, I have gone to said teacher because I still did not understand her vague answers. She then told me, in these exact words (translated from Dutch of course): “The time for asking questions has passed.” What? Are you not getting paid to teach me? Which includes answering questions I have about your class.
- Now this is a very minor and personal issue. I do not like the projects we’re forced to work on. We’re always forced to work in groups of 3-5, which I have no issue with. But I would like to work on something I am passionate about, however the things I am passionate about are much more difficult than what is needed to pass the classes. So the people I work with would rather do the easier, more boring things, to make sure they pass the class. Which I do not blame them for, I used to be like that too. Until I realised it only makes me feel more miserable. I would also feel extremely bad about myself for being the reason someone didn’t pass a class.
I digress. As I said before, I have one of the things my brother has. The other two feel extremely out of reach. I haven’t the energy to get out of bed in the morning, let alone work a job next to the 8 hours a day of school. I also need to find an internship for my next year, should I pass this one. However the interaction and work it is to find a place where I can follow an internship is enormously daunting to me. It feels so difficult, in fact, that climbing a mountain with no previous experience sounds like an easier time to me. Then for love. Oh how I would like to love someone. And have them love me back equally. But how does one go about meeting someone like that? With mostly online friends from different countries, and the ones that are from my country not being the most extroverted people, it becomes quite difficult to put myself out there. Especially when being afraid of every little thing that could go wrong. Even when I know people won’t care, it still haunts me like a living nightmare. I suppose you could say I am directly afraid of people. I suppose the medical term is social anxiety disorder.
Social anxiety disorder (SAD), also known as social phobia, is an anxiety disorder characterized by a significant amount of fear in one or more social situations, causing considerable distress and impaired ability to function in at least some parts of daily life. These fears can be triggered by perceived or actual scrutiny from others. Individuals with social anxiety disorder fear negative evaluation from other people. (Source: Wikipedia).
Now what does one do when they try to avoid social situations? They read, they watch movies, they watch tv shows or play video games. In short, they indulge themselves in places they would rather be. Places where they would not have to be scared about anything, because the things that scare them are not actually there. I have a spent a considerable unhealthy amount of time playing the video game World of Warcraft. This game is what they call a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game or MMORPG for short. In it players get to invest themselves in a fleshed out fantasy world along with a plethora of stories and characters they can follow. It also allows them create a character for themselves and act as if they are that character, playing a role in a story if you will. Role playing. I also said this game is multiplayer and online. What does that mean? It means that all over the globe, players get together and play this game. But doesn’t that go against the concept of social anxiety? In short, it does and it doesn’t. It does because, yes there is social interaction between players in the game. But it also doesn’t, because you are playing a character. A character that you made, but that isn’t exactly you. You control its actions, but it is not you. I feel like that is most important point. A barrier gets created between you and the outside world. You have yourself and you have your character. This, for me, has grown to a point beyond just the game. I now have, what I would describe as, two versions of myself. While they are mostly similar, they are not exactly the same. I have the “real-life me” and the “online me.” The online me has no trouble accepting a call from someone through one of the many voice chat clients available. (Mainly Discord). However the real-life me would not, under any circumstances, be able to pick up the phone or call someone with it.
Now this is not the only thing I did, of course. I also spent a lot of time reading books like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Harry Potter series, the Artemis Fowl series and the Chronicles of Narnia. Also watching things like Game of Thrones and anime. All of these have fully fleshed out worlds that I would often daydream and think about while doing things in real life. This phenomenon could be put into a single word we defined earlier: escapism. Namely the escaping to an alternate world in order to avoid the struggles of the real one.
This brings me to the last word. Which I think is quite an interesting word. It’s one of those things that I feel a lot of people have, but no one talks about. Perhaps because we are embarrassed or because we simply would rather keep it to ourselves. Since the definition above is rather vague, I’ll elaborate a bit before getting into it. A paracosm is a world that has been made by and for someone. It is a fantasy. And it never really becomes more than that. I believe people that think more about their actions and their life are more likely to have a paracosm. It’s often used to prepare for things that might happen, learn from our previous mistakes or to fill a void in our lives. For me it all of those. Since I was about 7 or 8 years old every night after getting into bed, I would fantasize about this world and my alternate life in it. I would create complex characters with long and multiple intertwining stories. I have done it religiously since then and still do it to this day. One thing I have noticed as I’ve grown older is that the stories I fantasize about are a direct reflection of my life. As I long for love I find that my alter ego now has a lovely wife that he adores. They spend most of their time together and are genuinely happy. But then morning comes. I lose all that makes me happy and have to face the grey reality that is life. Because that’s what it is to me.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not suicidal. Not anymore, at least. In fact, I’ve come to appreciate this feeling. Which sounds odd. Over the past 2000 words all I’ve said is that I’m in a bad mental state. So how could I appreciate this feeling? This is the hardest thing for me to explain. The concept of enjoying feeling depressed. I think it is perhaps because I feel at peace. When I’ve locked myself into my room and I’m writing stories and creating worlds I get to completely forget about everything else. Because deep down I really do not care anymore. Which is a really dangerous thing to say. But it’s true. I dislike the fact it’s true, but I cannot deny it. I do not care whether I get my degree in software engineering or not, I do not care if I have to live off of a minimum wage job for the rest of my life. In fact I don’t care about life at all. Mostly because I don’t see the point in living, but I don’t see the point in dying either. In fact, I don’t really see the point in anything. Which is why I feel like I just want to give up. Give up everything and pursue only the things that make me happy. But then that gets me thinking. What makes me happy? Because as I sit here writing this whole thing down, I cannot think of anything that currently makes me happy. Truly happy, not just the average shot of dopamine your body gives you when you’ve finished masturbating. And I feel for that we need to look at yet another definition. (Yes, I like using the definition of things to get my points a cross).
happy
- adj. Feeling or showing pleasure or contentment.
- adj. Fortunate and convenient.
- adj. Inclined to use a specified thing excessively or at random.
The Oxford dictionary defines happy as “feeling or showing pleasure or contentment.” However, this would mean that anything that would make me feel content for just a moment has made me happy. For that moment at least. As I’ve explained earlier, that is not really the kind of happy I am looking for. In fact, the Dutch language has a very good word the kind of happy I am looking for. Gelukkig.
Geluk (of gelukkig zijn) kan worden omschreven als het tevreden zijn met de huidige levensomstandigheden. (Source: Wikipedia).
In short, if one is “gelukkig” they are content with the current state of their life. Which is the exact thing I’m looking for. There is one problem however. Which I’ve addressed earlier when I covered depression. I neither know what makes me happy, nor do I have the energy to search for something that makes me happy. This isn’t entirely true however. I do know somethings that I think would make me happy. Writing stories and developing games. I believe doing those things makes me happy. So I have one thing down. Great. Now I need to somehow find the energy to actually do those things. Quite frankly, I have no clue how or where I should get said energy from. But then even if I have the energy to do those things, I don’t have the motivation or the discipline to actually finish something. At this point it might seem like I am just coming with excuses, but I truly don’t know what to do. In fact, the process of writing this all down makes it sound to me like I am just making up everything to feel special. Which brings me to the next point.
Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon, impostorism, fraud syndrome or the impostor experience) is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts his or her accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud”.[1] Despite external evidence of their competence, those experiencing this phenomenon remain convinced that they are frauds, and do not deserve all they have achieved. (Source: Wikipedia).
As I have said earlier, I do not believe I have accomplished anything in my life so far. But I need to take that statement a bit further to truly explain how I feel about that. I do not just feel like I haven’t accomplished anything, I feel as though what I have accomplished are not things I should have accomplished in the first place. I do not feel I am worth the credit for those accomplishments. This extends to more than just accomplishments however. Whenever I do research into or get taught about a topic and I come a cross things I have researched or been taught before I start doubting myself. Because the way they use the terms and information of said things makes me think I did not actually understand it at all. Like I’ve been faking my understanding of said thing all this time. Whilst in truth, I haven’t. I just believe I have, therefore I have. I understand that what I just said doesn’t make any sense, but hear me out. Here’s an example, I know what an apple is. Someone shows me how to make an apple pie. For that I need to cut the apple, wait… I need to cut the apple? Now I know how to cut an apple, but I believe I don’t know. And because I don’t know, I panic. What knife do I use to cut the apple? Which way should I cut the apple? Should I use a big or a small apple? All these questions are mostly trivial. The answer to them doesn’t really matter, but I believe it does. I understand this might be rather vague still. So lets look at what else the internet has to say about the imposter syndrome.
Individuals with impostorism incorrectly attribute their success to luck, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent than they perceive themselves to be. (Source: Wikipedia).
They call their success luck, good timing, and dismissed as other’s believing they were better, more intelligent and more competent than they actually are. (Source: The Reality of Imposter Syndrome, Megan Dalla-Camina, on PhychologyToday.com)
So according to most sources, my feeling is best described as attributing my success to outside factors and deceiving others into thinking I am more intelligent than I perceive myself to be. Which I think is a valid description of how I feel.
When you put everything together it sounds quite messed up. Which, when I think about it, is probably true. I’m currently visiting an intermediary psychologist while I’m waiting in line for the actual psychologist. And we’ve started talking about my problems. She’s a lovely woman, but the tips she’s giving me aren’t really addressing the real issues. And I think that’s mostly my fault since I’m really bad at explaining how I feel when people ask me to. But I suppose that’s the reason I started writing this whole thing. Which turned out quite a lot longer than I expected it to. If you’ve made it this far, I hope this essay has given you at least some insight into how I truly feel. If you have any questions about anything, feel free to ask me. I usually quite enjoy talking about things like this. Philosophising, if you will. For now though, I think I’ll attempt to escape reality once more and go back to the much more interesting story in my paracosm.