Friday 15 August 2014

Robin Williams After Life


I have a confession to make, I never thought that Robin Williams was funny. I liked Mork and Mindy when it was on but only because it was different. Trying to think what Robin Williams movies I liked I came up with Insomnia and One hour photo, both serious roles. Insomnia has Williams playing a manipulative killer and One hour photo as a lonely man who becomes a stalker ..... maybe I could relate to those guys or something.

It was like he was trying too hard to be funny that it annoyed rather than amused me, ah well that's me.
In a 2010 interview with The Guardian newspaper he said, "In America, they really do mythologize people when they die" now he is getting that treatment but I think it's because he really was loved by those who grew up with him and whom he made laugh.


What dreams may cum. 

What dreams may cum is a 1998 movie in which everyone dies. Williams' character (who is dead and in heaven) needs to go to Hell to rescue his wife's soul as she committed suicide. It seems that those who kill themselves give themselves an afterlife of hell and torment.  At the young age of 63 it wasn't his time to go but he made it so, I hope he can find the peace he didn't have during his life. 

Everyone now has an opinion on suicide, depression and comedy genius. No no no you don't have to be a humorous person to be depressed, Old Knudsen has suffered depression for years and he isn't funny, I'm no a clown to amuse you with a butt monkey dance so fack aff! 

Idiots in the media have said things like Williams was a coward and selfish. Here are the facts from someone who not only suffers from depression but has been suicidal upon occasion. 

No one knows what depression is, medical people may say it has to do with chemicals in the brain so they throw pill upon pill at you until something works .... medical science my arse, medical guessing more like. 
No wonder Old Knudsen can pass himself off as a doctor, yer depressed? take two of these and maybe 3 of these and snap out of it ..... have you ever just tried not to be depressed? ach go away yer being a right downer. 


Depression is a monster that lies in wait until a time in which it thinks yer vulnerable then it attacks. It chips away at yer very core making you believe shit about yerself that isn't true. Sometimes you can fight it back and say "wise up, I've got no time for this shit" while other times you'll listen to it and even believe it. 

It keeps telling you that there is no hope, that yer a loser, that maybe the world and yer family might be better off without you. Logic and reason leaves you and what this monster tells you via yer own thoughts seems like the truth. They are yer own thoughts after all, repetitive dreadful thoughts.

People can tell you the real truth, you aren't a loser, yer an intelligent, funny, caring person and the world is a brighter place with you in it ..... you hear the words but they sound hollow and you dismiss them in favour of yer familiar and therefore no doubt true, monster thoughts.   

His series was cancelled in May and he had the start of Parkinson's disease so there was no doubt plenty of room for doubt and fear. 

But .....

Suicide is selfish .... FACT!

If you kill yerself you are taking the easy way out, the cowards way .... FACT!

Suicide is selfish because it leaves behind people who loved you, who needed you, not only have you ripped a hole in their lives but a part of them blames themselves. There will also be resentment at having lost someone in this way and guilt at having felt the resentment. Children of a parent who have committed suicide may often end in that way themselves

Robin Williams had a wife, a daughter and two sons, he took her husband and their father from them. 

The thing is that depression itself is selfish, that's the nature of the beast, it's all about yerself. It stops you thinking about others and caring about them, what you do feel is self pity magnified 10 times until the crap that the monster is telling you is the only truth and maybe, there is only one answer because no one else could possible understand.

Depression makes you selfish, depression makes you a coward. 

Williams had always felt fear and anxiety all his life, about what? about everything! Alcohol helps to a point or rather makes you think it helps, his cocaine habit didn't help so much which was why it was more easy to give up. Paranoid and impotent was how he described himself on coke. 

How does Old Knudsen know all of this? Old Knudsen is no coward, he has done things that would be deemed exceptionally brave, not the jumping into a river without thinking to save a puppy brave, that's the easy brave, I mean 3am, lonely long walk to do the deed that may harm you but you do it anyway again and again. 

The fear that comes with depression has made me a selfish coward .... well to my mind anyway, and yes it's a real illness . 
Selfishness and cowardice are things that are opposite to how I live and how I want to live and that is what I have to remember to get me through no matter what lies my monster tells me.
If you live life having done altruistic deeds then it makes it easier to believe that it is who you really are which is why I believe in actions being more important than just words. 

I try to be a man of my word, I try not to be a total cunt. I don't pretend to try I do it, I try.    

If you can keep your head when all about you, Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too.... blah blah blah.

If, by Rudyard Kipling is a poem that is more like an instruction manual than just a poem. My late father clipped it out of a magazine and sent it to me once. It is the best advice a father could give to a son if the father didn't really do emotion and advice.


Why have I described my depression as a monster? because I can fight a monster, it's easier to externalize depression in order to fight it than say fighting yourself. I get angry at my depression and kick it's ass. I hate what depression does to me, I hate how it makes me feel so I direct that hate right back at it .... rather than directing it at myself.

Sometimes self-loathing will win a skirmish but not the war. Old Knudsen has embraced it to a point as it's surely a part of him as his fine muscular arms are. Being at war with yerself isn't a good way to live so making fear and that side of you yer bitch is vitally important, keep it close as you would yer enemies so they can't pull any of their shit.

Embrace all yer sides the good and the bad so you'll know what to work on and what you are happy with.  

Depression often feels as if it comes in waves, some waves bigger and more powerful than others, keep yer head and don't panic, the waves will be over soon enough. Robin Williams forgot that, he didn't see any hope, he had the narrow panicked tunnel vision of someone who was tired of struggling in the currents. 

Just a rest that's all I need.  

 

He was funny, he was brave, he was hairy, he was human and he will be missed.

His last Instagram was to his daughter Zelda at the end of July, wishing her a happy 25th birthday. I hope his family can find the strength they need during this time.  Zelda who is an actress has had idiots on Twitter giving her a hard time and posting inappropriate pictures saying that they were her father. She is quitting Twitter due to it.

Sometimes it's people rather than depression that are the monsters.

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