Dejection: Unjustified Fear Guaranteed Within Half an Hour, or It's Free!

Tuesday night was one of those sleepless ones where I just stayed up till morning. I started off just fucking around with my phone (Android + DualShock 3 connectivity via Bluetooth + emulators = ^_^), but eventually decided to put some music on from an album I downloaded a few weeks back. All the songs on the album are re-imagined versions of the musical compositions from Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie's Double Trouble (both the SNES and GBA versions, each with its own soundtrack), and a few of the tracks really struck me, so I usually end up putting them on single repeat for a while. Thing is, two of the songs I love on this album are depressing as all fuck, able to make me sad just through their tone. I still can't resist listening to them, but goddamn, these two in particular just breed melancholy for me:

I don't know how they turn the score for a video game into that, but they sure do manage to play with my emotions :P  I had the song on the left on repeat last night, and it brought me down pretty quick, for longer than I usually let myself down for as well.

Jumping forward to Wednesday morning, I watched this video by MrRepzion:

This made me a little uncomfortable, but it wasn't due to any fault of the video itself. Rather, it tied in with what I was thinking about while I was down and out: how I think of girls, and how my actions towards them can be interpreted.

I'll start off with the thoughts I had during the night. After I put the song on and listened to it a few times, I slowly sank inside and started moping around. The idea in my head was that I would never find someone to be with in a relationship, and that I should come to the realisation that I must rely on myself for comfort rather than someone else. This supposed need for complete and total social independence is a common side-effect of these depressive episodes—whilst reason clearly states that humans are social animals who rely on each other to survive, interaction with other humans being a need, that all goes to shit when reason takes a walk.

Those thoughts led me to conclude that I would never find a girl to be with and would remain alone forever. It didn't stem from my thought that my body and personality weren't attractive so much as it stemmed from my 'decision' to keep myself away from other people due to my apparent failures as a human being, simply skipping the step of trying to avoid inevitable failure. I curled into a ball and held myself, thinking I'd never have someone else to hold me, that no one would even want to be with me in any form. Even on a pure social level, I believed myself too ignorant to continue on, assuming women would think me to be some bumbling fool who couldn't handle himself and didn't know how to treat them. I pictured myself showing no confidence and having no emotional maturity, the woman coming to the same conclusion and leaving upon any attempt of mine to engage. These thoughts carried on for an hour or two.

I eventually turned the music off and watched some Nostalgia Critic videos; this brought me right back up. Comedy continues to rein as my yet-to-fail anti-depressant.

Now skip back to Wednesday morning, sunrise: I watch the video about nice guy syndrome. This brings back memories of Schoolies, where I had a similar attitude. I never explicitly treated the girl in question nice to with the intent of getting something in return, but I did feel as though it didn't make sense that my supposed good treatment of women in general wasn't being acknowledged and rewarded, which is ass-backwards (not to mention the fact that making sexual desires for said girl public isn't exactly treating them well, is it :P). That brought back the feelings for a short while, almost confirming that not only am I socially ignorant, but that I'm a pig too, and I couldn't treat women properly even if I tried. These thoughts didn't linger for long, but they still occurred.

On a side note, I read her entry on my entries a short while ago where she criticised what I wrote from her perspective as a feminist. I'd known it was there for ages, but only now have I read it top-to-bottom. A lot of it's exaggerated (she told me it was more of a rant than anything else), and some of it was dead wrong, ignoring other parts of the blog and misinterpreting things; but the core issue of my nice guy syndrome was, at least in the parts she quoted, undeniable. It wasn't easy to read, but I'd like to think I'm beyond that mindset now. Reading stuff like that can often make me reconsider this, making me go "damn, maybe it's so bad that I'll never escape it", but the fact of the matter is that I don't think like that anymore. The stuff on how women like men with confidence still bites, but it's fact and I need to get used to it.

Fast forward to tonight: Thursday night. Same song comes on, same thoughts flood my head—not as intense, but still lingering in my head and making me sad. This time, the thoughts leaned more towards how I'm perceived by girls in general, now coming to the conclusion that they would judge me prematurely based on either my physical appearance or what little they knew about my personality (eating habits, arrogant stage persona, lack of confidence off-stage, etc.), determining yet again that a relationship with a woman is not possible in the real world and that I should stop dreaming about it.

This time, though, I thought "Hmmm... maybe what's making me sad... is this sad music. There seems to be this thing where every time I listen to sad music, it makes me sad face. Hmmm... let's listen to a different song and see if that makes me more smiley." I changed the song, and no more than a minute later, I'm bobbing along to it and totally out of the blue, as it were.

Right, first rule for maintaining confidence in one's self: don't make one's self sad on purpose by listening to depressing music >.<

I even started to perform my own improvised monologue out loud (albeit quietly, given it's 3 am :P) where I went through this very issue verbally. I relate this predetermined social failure to an entry the aforementioned friend of mine wrote where she addressed her own appearance. She isn't having depressive episodes or anything (if she is, she isn't writing about them :P), but she has said she'd like to feel more confident with her appearance, this being one of the reasons she wants to lose weight: so she doesn't feel judged by skinny girls or feel too self-conscious going into clothing boutiques. Her reason clearly states that, no, looks aren't everything—she clearly knows this—but part of the rational behind her weight loss is increased confidence from an improved self-image.

My perspective differs from hers: while she doesn't hate her body, she thinks it could do with some improvement. On the other hand, I'm like "o.O ...wut? Skinny girls? Since when were you fat? You aren't fat; you're hot! I like the way you look now! You look awesome! Seriously! You're at the top of my scale! I can't see room for improvement! Your size is perfect, in all areas!" Granted, I don't ogle this girl cos it's been made clear she's not interested, so there's no point; and I don't fantasise about her (anymore :P) cos I don't see the point of intentional indulgence in a dream that will never come to pass. But my opinion still stands: this girl looks great to me. She looks yummy as far as I'm concerned. And it's not because I'm easily impressed; there are girls I'd classify as overweight, and there are plenty of chicks I find plain fuckin' ugly. This girl just happens to suit my physical tastes.

Is my opinion wrong? Is my scale fucked up? No—we just have differing opinions. And there is written testimony right here that there is at least one person who does find her pretty, beautiful, sexy, all dat shit. This is evidence that, while she might think she doesn't look her best, there are people who would beg to differ. Far be it from me to stop her losing weight just because I like her body—she has far more justifications that changing her appearance, and it's a good decision all-round to lead a healthier life—but what I'm trying to say is her generalising about how people might judge her body negatively is conjecture based on emotional reasoning, not a logical position with evidence to back it up (and if it is, then fuck you, norm, fuck you >.<).

And I'm not trying to be creepy; I'm trying to make a point, goddamnit :P

Now, sure, I might think of myself as an ugly, ignorant, diffident, misogynistic douchebag with the diet of an obese twelve-year-old, but that doesn't mean everyone else does! Some people might like me—I don't know that they do, but I don't necessarily know that they don't either, so I can't jump to either conclusion. And I'll put it out there: if a girl were to come up to me and say she thought I was hot, or that I turned her on, or that she liked my body in any way, part of me would be like "wwwhhhaaattt the fuck is wrong with this woman... seriously, this chick's insane... get her away from me... >.>"; but most of me would be like ":O WUT REALLY LIKE OMG why thank you :D".  I'm not gonna call them a liar and demand justification for their attraction and call them crazy for flattering me, now am I :P.  Sure, not many people might share her opinion, but fuck them: this person likes me, so that's an opportunity right there regardless. The girl might not be right for me, too—she might not be my type physically, mentally, socially, interest-wise—but that can't be determined without investigation, so it must be taken for what it is: a mere possibility.

So, I guess the second rule in maintaining confidence in one's self would be to always take the null hypothesis in these difficult scenarios. It seems best to ditch emotional reasoning and simply go "I know neither what she's gonna think of me, nor what I'm gonna think of her, nor what's gonna happen after we start talking. But I do know that not talking to her will get me nowhere, so it is more logical to instigate conversation than to avoid it". Can't get into her pants unless I ask, can I :P

I'm not one for New Year's resolutions, but I seriously want this year to be different. 2012 was even worse than 2011: I gained nothing in a year when I should have made lots of gains, and it was due to unjustified fear. Getting and maintaining the confidence to enter new situations is key to turning. If I want to do any of the following things:

• Perform comedy at new venues
• Meet new people
• Enter another relationship
• Lose my virginity
• Learn to drive

—then I need the ability to do things I have not yet done, and hence the confidence to assert the fact that I simply do not know how things will turn out until they have fucking turned out :P  I don't trust myself for a second, which is the problem. I cannot hire a guy to put a gun to the back of my head and force me to do these things; if I could, I would have done that ages ago :P  Self-reliance in terms of maintaining confidence is something I need to practice, not just talk about. If something brings me down, then I must find a way to stop being down rather than indulge in the down...ness, and then I need to find a way to not be caught by the same trap again.

Now, if the girl in question would like to hit me for anything I've said here, please leave detailed instructions on how you'd like the blow to be dealt, and I shall take care of it for you. My self-reliance must begin somewhere :P