“Even the good things are bad,” I mused glumly to myself, “even the good things are crappy…”

Thinking this made me feel even worse – it was as if I hadn’t actually realized how thoroughly lousy things really were until I focussed on it. I had, I suppose, just taken it for granted that there were some things in my life that were still good, some things that I still had going for me. Something, at least. But then – when I needed to be able to think of them – I couldn’t come up with anything. I couldn’t help seeing that there was nothing there. Zilch. Nada. There weren’t any good things any more, and the one or two things that I stupidly assumed still were at least half-way good now revealed themselves to be not so good at all. In fact I can see now that they are lousy. They stink. They stink real bad…

This left me nothing. I had nowhere to go. No other cards to play. What the hell was I supposed to do? What was I to think?

The answer came to me with grim inevitability – I was to think exactly what I just had been thinking. I was to think that there was no bright side. No silver lining. No light at the end of the tunnel. Not this time. I was to think that I was sunk. I was to think that I was finished. All washed up. Screwed. How many ways were there to arrive at this conclusion? How many ways were there to say it?

And having reached this conclusion – which I could now see to be a true and undeniable conclusion – what could I do about it?

I didn’t know. I had run out of tricks. Run out of moves. Run out of ideas. I just sat there, wondering how on earth it had come to this. Other people did okay, other people got what they wanted, got to be successful or happy, got to have interesting lives. Why not me?

It didn’t seem at all fair and this made me angry. How could other people have great lives and not me?

“Fuck it”, I cursed, “I don’t have to take this shit…”

But even as I said this I knew that I DID have to take it. I knew that I was going to take it and keep on taking it. I knew that this was all that was in store for me from now on. Shit, shit and yet more shit. And – what’s more – I knew that I deserved it. I couldn’t even manage to be angry about things any more.