Alritey. The World Cup is over. Now I can get back to writing.<\/p>\n
How was the Tina Dickow show? It was really good. The music was wonderful.<\/p>\n
I didn’t get the best seats though. My own damn fault. I was there early enough. I picked roughly the same spot as I did when I saw Swan Lee there last year. But I don’t know if there were more people this time or if I was just unlucky. Because when all the people sitting down started getting up then I could suddenly see nothing. Nothing but the back of people’s heads. That’s what I get for being short and phobic. I could have gotten a spot closer to the scene but then I would have been standing in the middle of the crowd. And I didn’t exactly feel like that.<\/p>\n
Speaking of the crowd, I still don’t understand why people go to a concert and then spend the whole time talking. I guess at an outdoor venue you have to expect that. I would just prefer a quiet, hushed awe. And maybe some cheering and singing along at appropriate points.<\/p>\n
Two guys were standing behind me. Talking, chatting, chittering, chirping. Loudly. So loudly that their voices rose above the general chatter. At one point they were talking about some girl and one of them said “it’s actually an interesting story” to which the other one replied “Well I have nothing but time right now…”. Grargh. I felt like turning around and saying “it’s a concert. You have nothing but time for the rest of your life”. But I am much too polite and phobic for that. Eventually I got so tired of listening to them that I moved away. And I even managed to move forward a little, to the edge of the real crowd. And I got to a place where I could see Tina and the band. Much better.<\/p>\n
As I said, the music was wonderful. Tina is great, the band is great. I’ll see her next week too. That’ll be my 5th. And I’m not tired of her yet, not by a long shot. I have tickets for December too. So by the end of the year I’ll be up to 6. Finally I won’t have to be ashamed when people on her forum talk about how many shows they’ve been to. Although I still have a long way to go before I’ll catch up with some of the others. <\/p>\n
I am lucky to have an artist like that, an artist whose music I love and who I have some slight connection to. If she was one of those plastic bubblegum popgirls then it would still be fun and interesting. But it’s so much better when I actually love the music. And I do. And I’m lucky to have had her as a part of the positive process I’m going through. It really did mean a lot to me that she recognised and remembered me. That she was nice to me. I know I am not the greatest writer in the world, I am not the best photographer, Tina didn’t remember me because I was such an awesome cool guy in High School. But it is still that feeling, of being know and liked. Of not being worthless and horrible. The same feeling I get when you guys leave me comments. It makes me feel alive, and glad to be alive.<\/p>\n
The weather was thankfully cool too. As if the heatwave decided to take a break. Maybe it decided to just hang out and listen to the music. There were even a couple of tiny rain drops as I walked home. It was a good walk home by the way. Radiohead in my earphones. Deserted streets. That part of the evening when it’s dark, but its a light kind of dark. The moon and stars. I felt sort of cool, walking along. Cool as in hip. It’s easier to feel cool when there are no people around. One of the most common things for people who suffer from social phobia is the fear of being judged. And it really is a fear. It’s hard to turn that around. But it’s gotten better for me. I can be in a crowd now, without feeling too bad. I can walk outside. I can go in shops. I can ask for help. I can sit down on a bench. There are lots of things I can do now, that I couldn’t do in the past. In the broader sense my phobia doesn’t control me anymore. But it still does when it comes to close contact. Initimate contact. One on one. That’s still very, very hard for me. And those are the steps I’m having a hard time taking now. Facing those fears. But I don’t want to think too much about that right now. I deserve a couple of days of not worrying. It is now vacation. I am shutting down all systems.<\/p>\n
My dad’s brother was here yesterday. Jens. Nice to see him again. I don’t really know him too well. He lives in Zealand, we on Jutland. Interestingly enough the entire family, on my mother’s as well as on my dad’s side, lives on Zealand. I don’t really know why we live on Jutland. Why we moved here.<\/p>\n
Jutland is the peninsula part of Denmark by the way. The part that is connected to Germany. Zealand is our biggest Island. I live in ?rhus, our second largest city. The capital, Copenhagen, is on Zealand. Fascinating, don’t you think? If you want to see all this on a world map then… you’re probably out of luck. We’re just a tiny dot. Find England and Germany, and then we’re sort of above Germany and next to England. I think. I always sucked at geography.<\/p>\n
Anyway. I got side tracked. Yes, there are plenty of things I don’t know. Like why we moved to Jutland. I pretty much don’t know anything about the time before I was born. I have seen some pictures, but my parents have never talked about it. Leading to much speculation on my part about whether they actually ever loved each other. Whether they stayed together because my mum got pregnant with me. And other such things. My dad was getting an ashtray for Jens and said that it was probably one of my mother’s old ones. Apparently she “smoked like a chimney”. I didn’t know that. As far as I knew my parents had never been smokers. I didn’t catch the part about why she quit, but apparently she never smoked a single one after it. I think it might have been when I was born she stopped. <\/p>\n
Communication has never really been the greatest strength in our family I guess. I sometimes wonder where my social phobia came from. Is it genetic, did I inherit it? Was it my upbringing? Was it just some random thing? I don’t know. I guess it doesn’t matter that much anyway, it’s the future that counts.<\/p>\n
I felt reasonably okay while we had visitors. My dad’s colleagues and Jens. That is another way things have improved. In the past it was really horrible for me when we had visitors. It makes sense. Our house is the safe place. It’s the place where I can be myself and I don’t have to worry about social things. And when you suddenly get strangers invading your safe place then you have nowhere to turn. It’s kind of like taking a box of spiders to the house of someone who suffers from arachnophobia. And then opening it and letting the spiders crawl out. How would that person sleep at night? I remember past incidents where I would sit at the computer, in the living room, and I couldn’t leave. Because the visitors were in the living room. I remember having to pee so badly but I couldn’t get up and go to the toilet. I remember my stomach literally growling with hunger, but I couldn’t go to the kitchen and get something to eat because the dinner table would be in the way and they’d all be sitting there, eating dinner. I’d never eat dinner with them of course. I’d never do anything with them. Preferably I’d hide away in my room until they were gone. And then I’d be safe again.<\/p>\n
All the spiders back in the box where they belonged.<\/p>\n
It’s always good to look at how much things have improved. And gather strength from it, to face the future.<\/p>\n
In other, more silly, news: I’m buying a new computer. D’oh!<\/p>\n
Oh well. It’s a good thing money grows on the trees in Denmark.<\/p>\n
As she counted the spiders
\nas they crawled up inside her
\nas she counted the spiders
\nas they crawled up inside her<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alritey. The World Cup is over. Now I can get back to writing. How was the Tina Dickow show? It was really good. The music was wonderful. I didn’t get the best seats though. My own damn fault. I was there early enough. I picked roughly the same spot as I did when I saw […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/plume.dk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/plume.dk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/plume.dk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/plume.dk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/plume.dk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/plume.dk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/plume.dk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/plume.dk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/plume.dk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}