Delusions of Grandeur
Grandiose delusions: An unshakable belief that you are the greatest.
My brother spends long periods in silence sneering at the room. He’s generally a disconnected sort of person. He spent so much time painting over the holidays that he was surprised when we told him it was Christmas Day.
Sometimes he talks. Unexpectedly and at length. About his perception of himself and his place in the world. He is a great artist. Probably the greatest artist to ever come out of Ireland. He says that he knows that he hasn’t quite got it yet but he’s getting there and he can feel it inside himself. He says other people don’t get it. But soon they will. He laughs at other people’s art. He pities my father and his work.
Actually he looks down on everyone in the family- a bunch of losers: missed opportunities and wasted natural gifts. He mutters incoherently about what he would do if he had such gifts.
On the phone to me, Dad is worried about the paintings- “they look like a Bobby Sands protest”, there’s struggle in the brush strokes- “do you think he’s depressed?”
We discuss his childhood at length, the difficult birth, the time he knocked himself out by falling down the stairs with the hoover…
He’s such a jerk about his talent that there’s a part of you that thinks he must have a mental illness.
But also there’s a strange fear that he might be right.
That he might be a genius- and that we are all losers.
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