Some time ago I wrote a blog post called
Tell Me, Where is Gandalf? This is a follow-up. A sad one, I’m afraid.
As I’m sure you are aware, Gandalf ran
into some trouble with a Balrog. Well, I did too. My particular Balrog is
called Depression, and it brought a friend, called Social Anxiety. They both do
their best to make my life miserable, and to be honest I’m not really helping,
either.
I’m not going to write a long post
about my problems. I might, one day, but not today. I don’t think it’s
interesting anyway. I know all too much about them, and you probably couldn’t
care less. That’s fine. This is about my Grand Plan of dressing up as Gandalf
for the premiere of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, which is on the 11th
of December here. (That’s on Wednesday! OMG, YOU GUYS! WEDNESDAY!) To do that,
I wanted to make a costume myself, both because that is a wonderful challenge
for me, and because most costumes I can afford to buy look cheap and
unrealistic.
I wrote the post in May. I did lots
of research the following weeks and months, and thought a lot about how I would
do it, where to buy what I needed, what I needed, when I had the house to
myself so I could get some crafting peace. I even bought a book with tips and
stuff about sewing. (Read a bit in it too, it’s very useful and interesting.)
But the days flew by – not because I was busy doing lots of things, but because
I was busy doing nothing. I didn’t notice the time, because every day is
hellishly long, and my concept of time is on the level of a small child these
days. Worse, perhaps. Yesterday, last month, last year, this morning – they all
seem equally far away for me. All there is is NOW. Great, you’re living in the
moment! you might say. But that’s the problem. I’m not living. I’m just
waiting. My life seems like an eternal waiting room. I wait and I wait and I
wait, and I can’t bring myself to do anything else.
Shoot, we started wandering into
depression land, didn’t we? Let me get back on track. As I noticed the calendar
showed a completely different month than I’d have guessed, I thought, well, I
won’t have the time or energy to create the whole costume, but at the very
least I can make the hat, right? That seems easy enough. I’d found a nice guide to it, as mentioned
in the other post, all I needed was the ingredients, some time, and a head
clear enough to understand the instructions, which are relatively simple. Of
the three, I’ve only really had one: time. A clear head, clear enough to go
shopping for anything that isn’t contact lenses or asthma medicines, clear
enough to comprehend basic English (or Norwegian, or German, or any other
language), is something I have not had access to for a couple of years now. I
did go looking for the cloth I needed a couple of times, but my mind refused to
cooperate.
So here I am, six and a half months
after writing my last blog post, and I have no hat, no robe, no cloak, and my
head is so useless I had to find a calendar and count the months since May,
because I couldn’t figure it out without any visual help. And it’s just three
short days until the premiere (I’m not counting Wednesday, since the movie
starts about one minute after Tuesday ends). I think we can safely count this
project as a big, definite failure.
No one is more sorry about it than I
am. I really wanted it to happen, but it didn’t. I just have to accept that.
Back to the Balrog. (If you’re not
familiar with the story of The Lord of
the Rings, be warned, I’m being a bit spoilery now!) Just like Gandalf, I
said to my Balrog: “You shall not PASS!” And it didn’t. But it fell. And it
dragged me down with it, just like it did Gandalf. And right now I am at the
bottom of the pit, fighting my Balrog and its friend, and I just can’t do it.
They are overwhelming me.
But Gandalf came back, New and
Improved. And I will, too. I’m getting help now. And, of course, there will be
another Hobbit premiere. The big finale! There and Back Again. A year from now.
A new deadline. And I will make it this time!
You just wait and see. I will post
updates here. It will happen. I will rise again, New and Improved, stronger
than ever before.
Tolkienizer the White.
