My Therapist Told Me to Write About Films

Have you ever felt like you don’t belong? Like living wasn’t for you? Like whatever you do, it gets you nowhere or you’re not fit for the task? That every change you make to find your place simply… Doesn’t work?

I am not talking about impostor syndrome. This is something deeper. The sense you can do stuff but it’s never 100%. It’s not related to the workplace, but rather… your purpose.

I’ve been struggling with that for over a year now. It started somewhere in mid-2021 when the pandemic finally got to me. I hadn’t believed it could have happened to me. I was pretty well on my own and had more time to myself since commuting wasn’t an issue anymore.

I don’t know what changed my perspective. My life simply wasn’t sufficient any longer. The work didn’t satisfy me (even with truly amazing people), the hobbies weren’t doing it for me and I often needed to postpone them because I was so tired. I was renovating my new flat and had tons of decisions to make, too. Not to mention all the home chores.

It was this overwhelming weight of things mostly, but life didn’t have any meaning to me anymore (not that it’d ever had). I’ve always been depressed, I’ve never made a secret out of it. At that moment I was out of therapy. When the pandemic struck a year before, I’d felt fine and online therapy was absolutely pointless. And since I had an easy way out – maternity leave of my therapist – I stopped. But a lot happened in one year and I got back. Luckily, the new therapist happened to be way better. And a new journey began.

By journey, I don’t even mean therapy – been there done that. Yet, I tried my best to regain any sort of will to live. With the enormous help of my boyfriend I could quit my job and take care of all the rest (and there was a lot). And hopefully, find a better place for myself as well.

That was 16 months ago and counting. Great success. (sarcasm, for the record)

I had tons of plans and dreams about what I could do with my gained freedom, but having time wasn’t an issue either. I still was able to find tons and tons of excuses to be the same miserable self even though my life was pretty much a dream come true. My mind couldn’t care less about long-term projects that didn’t get instant dopamine shots. That was the only secure way to get out of the Numbness Town. Then (literally right after I finished with the flat) the war came and it was even worse. I didn’t expect it could, really, but here I was. It’s been a year since, who’d believe that?

So my 2022 was a literal disaster. All the plans and ideas were basically always postponed to the utopian “tomorrow” and I dodged it all. Obviously, constantly feeling like crap. I could literally move all my tasks to this year. I don’t even know where my time went. I woke up in November for the film festival season. It was more than too late to “catch up”.

But this is the sort of time I feel absolutely exhausted and overjoyed. I have a “purpose”. I don’t think about life further than the end of the festival. I want to watch quality films, enjoy the cinema and all the things most people won’t see for the next couple of months. Being excited and living in a different world. A world I kind of feel accepted because it isn’t real. It’s always an abbreviation of it. Where the clouds aren’t mine. Where I can learn and feel and find myself in a completely different light.

As you may anticipate, this is when the title of this post comes in. There’s not much to explain, really. The subject of writing about the films was back on the plate because I was babbling as I never did. My therapist already knew I wanted to do so but I wasn’t consistent with it and hated myself for that.

What I did was start figuring out the next year, pretending as if 2022 was already over. It didn’t work as I hoped, but as always I put way too much on my plate. I was yet again looking for a purpose. And actually make some effort to do things. Not by staying at square one and trying to make it work perfectly. I’ve never been a perfectionist, but I tend to make research for weeks so I don’t start actually writing (and so on). I always feel like I don’t know enough.

This thing here – this is a new beginning. I don’t know what it will be. I simply want to try again with a clean slate. I am sorry if this isn’t the content you’ve expected or if it’s somewhat disturbing. I wanted to share this. No matter who the reader is.

Thanks for reading. I hope you stick around.

Disclaimer:

I know I started hard, but I believe most of you know my previous try already. So I didn’t take anything back. A few things I left unexplained to shorten up the whole thing. Not that they don’t matter but they aren’t the core in here. I’m always up for a talk, though.