The Trouble

Maybe I sound cliche when I say that no one understands me, but that is and has been the way I have felt since I remember feeling for the first time. Now, what people don't understand is certainly not a singular idea, feeling, dream, sensation, or gesture. There are numerous things people do not understand about me. Here I will address one, but I can not guarantee that the one will not multiply. I never really know where I am going when I start to write, but I will try to be specific and stick to this problem of me and photography.
I am a good photographer in all senses of the term, but I only really care about being a good artist who uses photography as his tool. At this, I think I am good. For who is to say what makes an artist good, but that is not the point. Being good is not important. Being a photographer is important. Taking photos as a job is what I have to do with my life. If I don't do that then no one will ever know what I am capable of. I need to take photographs full time. This has to happen for me to feel alive.
I mention my mental illness more than I should. This fact most likely has a negative effect. People think that I am trying to get attention, or that I am making excuses (for what? I don't know). People only make assumptions about why I am so forward about having borderline personality disorder. I know this because no one has ever asked me why. No one has even brought it up, and I have never been asked a single question from anyone about this. It is in my bio on my website. I have written about it dozens of time on Facebook and even have a page,"Our Dystopia", dedicated to it. My brother thinks I am making it up yet still he has never said what it is that I am making up just that I am "not that bad", or "just lazy" and sometimes "just like dad". My needing to be a photographer fits into this. People misunderstand why. They think that it is simply a dream of mine; that I am no different from a child who wants to be a professional baseball player or an astronaut. They say that I should keep trying but that I have to have a real job. I'm sure they hear "world famous super rich photographer" when I say, photographer. What I mean is that I need to be me taking photos of subjects the way I like to take photos, and with these photos, I would like to have enough money to live on so I don't have to work a "real job"which only heightens my fear, pain, and delusion which keeps me from feeling whole, happy, or even human. There have been months where I have earned more than enough money to live on by taking photos. In fact, I once had a job which paid me $1000 a week to take photos. That is more than enough to live on, but people equate that job with luck and me leaving that job with stupidity. I believe the latter to be true slightly, but really it was my illness which made me quit that job. I did not think I could do it. You see, I have been programmed to expect failure. When something goes my way the first thing I do is try to sabatoge it. I am not supposed to win at anything. That is what my mind tells me. I am getting off the point.
I am a photographer. The world has only seen half of what I have done. Only two of the projects I shot on film have made it to the digital age. The rest sit in a box waiting for me to be able to afford their reanimation. I am getting close. This is going to happen soon. Now, there is one more obstacle. People have to understand that I can take my style of photography and use it for common purposes. It does not have to be photos of strangers on the street, the downtrodden, the disillusioned, or the odd. I can take photos of people's children in this fashion and they will love it. The same goes for their pets, spouses, parents, friends, co-workers, and on and on. I can shoot commercial work in the same style and people will love it, and the same goes for weddings and other events. Just about any type of photography that involves living things can be photographed by me and done my way without compromising my integrity or the quality of the work. The trick is that people need to see to believe , and that is a bit of a catch-22; I have to do the work to get the work but I can't get the work to do the work because I have never done the work. What is the solution? I have to do the work for free first. This doesn't seem like a problem. People love free stuff, right? The way I take photos is very intimate. I am following you around with a camera taking photos of you doing just about everything you do. Or I am doing this to your kid, your pet, and your wife. It is tough. It will be hard to accomplish all of this while trying to hold down a "real job" so I can pay my rent, eat and all that necessary shit. It's going to take a long time, and I am already starting to look ridiculous. I am 37. I am the best photographer you have never heard of who makes ten dollars an hour answering phones and used to be a chef, too. That is another thing that I am not just good at, but better than some of the best, and it was the simple fact that I did things too different from everyone else. No one could work for me. Either they were way underskilled and could not do what I needed them to do, or they were quite skilled but in traditional techniques; they hated me because I could do the job they went to school for and toiled at for many years so much better than they could and in a way that was completely my own. Of course, since my ways were not the old standard they must be wrong. My ways work, and they are no secret. Those chefs who could not work for me years ago have no doubt adopted the way I was doing things by now being that they have become the new standard in fine dining. Again, off the topic.
I need a break of some kind. I need help, or I need to learn patience. If I don't achieve my goal it will be the end of my world. Maybe, that sounds dramatic but it is true. My self-doubt, my fear, the sinking heart feeling that is constant from the moment I open my eyes in the morning to when I shut them at night only subsides when I am taking photos. Every other moment is Hell. It is agony. Now, I have been in my Hell for a long time, so I am a bit callused from the flames. The pain is dull most of the time, but there is no happiness. This is no joke, photography is the only medicine that works. It is only a theory of mine that if photography is my job then this constant misery will vanish, but people have faith in a lot less and I have to believe this.
I only put these words down in hopes that you will better understand me, and realize that I am not fighting for a child's dream, I am fighting for a man's life.