Hey let’s complain about video games! Actually it’s less of a compliant about gaming in general, and more of a complaint about those people who write off video games as either a hobby for losers, not art, or a waste of time. What follows is a long-winded and carefully worded “fuck you” to those people.

Let’s start off with he whole “gaming is for losers” thing. For some reason society still perpetuates the stereotype that all gamers are shut-in nerds who dedicate their entire lives to avoiding social interaction and sexual relations in order to play games. This was a phenomenon even before real computer gaming began, circa Dungeons and Dragons, but while the majority of stereotypes have some very thin slither of truth lurking in their creation, this one in particular has only grown less and less true as time has marched on. I personally have a very diverse social life, a girlfriend, and an interest in a lot of other things as well as my deep involvement with the gaming world. The fact that I’m a gamer is no different from the fact that I play tennis sometimes or enjoy noodles.

And now games aren’t art. The actual dictionary definition of art is “Works produced by such skill and imagination”. Note how this doesn’t specifically say “film”, “music”, “painting” or “poetry”; art is anything produced by skill and imagination, and the last time I checked people had to think of shit before shit was made. You can argue certain games are more artistic than others - I’m not here to argue the artist merit of military shooters, though they do have their moments - but there are some games out there solely dedicated to making you feel a certain way, or to give you a certain experience, and the last time I checked, that was the whole fucking point of art.

Here’s the one that annoys me most of all, not just because it makes no goddamn sense, but also because if there’s one thing I hate more than anything, it’s when people shut out new experiences for no goddamn reason other than their own snobbery. The compliant I see the old troglodytes making is that they didn’t enjoy the small portion of gaming that they saw one time, and so now they say that all gaming is stupid and that they hate it. This absolutely baffles the shit out of me, because it’s like saying you don’t like any form of film because you didn’t like Grind-house, or you don’t like sound any more because you dislike Nickleback. It’s absolutely fucking retarded, and if you’re that closed minded and narrow sighted that you can’t see how fucking stupid you sound when you say it, then I think the world will be better off if you just crawl under your rock made of political debates and expressions like “kid’s these days” and die quietly so the rest of us can fucking enjoy our lives, you cantankerous old fuck.

You know what, I’m just going to go with “Fuck you”.

Looking pretty damn summery if I do say so myself.

I’ve been thinking a bit about the underlying issues that caused me to suddenly descend into blubbering like a baby seal earlier today; it’s possible that the things happening around me may be getting to me at a subconscious level, and that I’m just not aware of it for the majority of the time because of the medication. This is totally cool if it’s the case - I’d rather be doped out of my mind and happy than the emotional dead weight I was before - but it still makes me wonder how much extra time drug-induced denial has over the ordinary kind.

The more I think about it, the more sense it makes. The waking dreams and the graphic nightmares alone would turn any normal human being off sleeping for the rest of their life, and I somehow brush it off in a couple of minutes. The fact that I seem to be emotionally unaffected by the whole grandad having aggressive cancer thing sets alarms off in my head because of a very simple but true rule I discovered earlier in my life, which is as follows:

If something horrible happens to you, something world-ending, and you don’t completely freak the shit out and break down; if in fact you don’t feel bad at all, you are in denial. It could last for days, or even years, but eventually, it will overcome and cripple you.

That may sound like a really harsh and critical judgement, but I’ve seen a whole lot of horrible shit, and that rule has always held true. So going by this same rule, either I’m in denial subconsciously, or I lost my humanity. While this could mean that I’ve ascended to an alternate plain of consciousness, or that I’ve somehow been replaced by a superior robot Kieran, it’s far more likely that I’m just in denial.

I don’t even know where all this is going, or even where it really came from, it’s just some thoughts I wanted to put on paper, but it doesn’t even look any clearer than before I started writing. I guess it’ll serve as an “I told you so” to my future self when the walls finally come tumbling down.

Basically just had a massive existential breakdown there for a second.

We went to my community support person as usual today. Something about this time though, the way it all sounded, the increasingly bleak and narrow options available to me and pressure to re-educate even after fifteen fucking years of academia - its like she was describing an illness to a terminal patient.

There aren’t really any options. I’m not qualified enough for most things, and overqualified for the rest. I seem to be in this Lagrange point of qualification, and it’s limiting my search criteria. She said I should go back to education, but it was education that caused me to snap in the first place! Going back is going back to how I was before, and I can’t go back to feeling like that.

So when I got clear of the building I started crying like a four year old. I can’t even really arrange all my thoughts, I just know that this is the worst I’ve felt in months, and I don’t know how the fuck I’m supposed to function in this fucking world if I can’t even get a goddamn fucking job after everything I’ve been through.

I had counselling near constantly with about seven different therapists, psychiatrists, school grief counsellors and youth trauma team workers for five years almost immediately after my father’s death, all of which were pretty much useless.

The only time I actually saw any benefit from therapy was with the psychologist in the medical mental health service prescribed to me along with anti-depressant medication. She went through cognitive behavioural therapy and how to handle negative emotions. She was the most help out of all the therapy, but I only really started feeling better when I got put on the medication I’m on now. Therapy may help some people, but it never did a whole lot for me.

Anyway, I don’t really have a problem with the occasional flashback. As weird as that sounds, if you’ve been reading more of my recent posts you’ll see I have horrendous nightmares, waking dreams, and the occasional hallucination, but I’m so desensitised to it all at this point that I don’t really get freaked out or set back by it. I supposed that’s probably a good thing!

Thank you very much, It’s always nice to hear some validation for this whole thing. Yeah I’ve thought about it a lot, about a book or something but I’m not really sure where to start, what to do or what I want the tone to be; it’s a bit all over the place.

Don’t worry about being a burden on people man; it’s really easy to fall into the trap of thinking you’re not worth it, but you are, and these people want to see you get better, so let them help you.

Getting to the part where you can actually do something for yourself took me six years without any sort of help. When I finally came out with the whole depression thing, got help from my family and doctors, I got better in one year. Someone telling you to just go out and do something is pretty much the worst thing they can say, because - at this stage - it’s just not that easy; but it will easier with help.

Keep me posted man, all the best.

It’s doctor’s - people - like your doctor who have peoples trust that annoy me. Annoy is too gentle a word; they fill me with such disgust, putrid hate and violent rage that would be considered overkill for Hitler.

Honestly, I know it may be hard to find another doctor, but you need to do something about it, cos citalopram is horrible when it hits you wrong, and you need and deserve the support of a decent human being on this thing man. Can you talk to anyone you know to find a better doctor?