My mind was telling me what to do. It wouldn’t ever let up – the damn thing was on my case the whole time. It was micro-managing me. It had me running around in circles. It had me bending over backwards. I was doing this and doing that and doing the other. And no matter what I did that wasn’t the end of it. No matter what I did it was never enough. No Sir it wasn’t. In no way was it anywhere near enough. There was always more to be done. My mind had me on the hop. It was lighting fires under my arse on a full-time basis – just as soon as I sat down after finishing one job it had me hopping up like a mad jack-in-the box to do another.

As well as this my mind was also giving me the benefit of its opinion on everything under the sun. “That thing’s good, that thing’s not so good, that thing is a piece of crap.” it would say. It would do the same thing with people. “That lad’s sound, that lad’s half-way OK, that lad’s a nonce, that lad’s a complete tosser…” it would say. Some people my mind didn’t like at all and it would say some very bad things indeed about them. I couldn’t even repeat what it said.

My mind was a real wise-ass. There wasn’t anything it didn’t know about. It had something to say about this, something to say about that, and something to say about everything in-between. It was forever yapping away about something or other. “Yappity-yappity-yappity yap yap yap. Yappity-yappity-yappity yap yap yap. Yappity-yappity-yappity yap yap yap. Yappity-yappity-yappity yap yap yap. Yappity-yappity-yappity yap yap yap. Yappity-yappity-yappity yap yap yap.” That was my mind. Falling over itself to come out with advice and opinions about every single thing that ever came up. There wasn’t anything that came up without my mind automatically thinking that it knew everything there was to know about it, and at the same time thinking that what anyone else had to say on the matter was a total load of shyte…

So not only was my mind totally controlling – a real heavy-duty control freak, in fact – it was also insupportably arrogant and obnoxiously opinionated into the bargain. As the years went by and I grew into what generally passes for adulthood I gradually became more and more aware of this. I can see that it was a very slow process now that I come to think of it, but that’s because I was under the thumb of my mind so much that I couldn’t ever question it. I was its bitch. I was its gopher-boy. I was its gimp. And do you think I ever got any appreciation for this? Do you think I ever got any gratitude or respect for letting my mind boss me around like this and fill my head with its nonsense every day? Did I fuck. All I ever got was abuse. My mind treated me like shit…

“You pathetic fucking loser,” my mind would tell me about a million times a day, “Can’t you do anything right?” You couldn’t believe the abuse I had to put up with from this mind. I was living on a razor’s edge – if I ever stepped out of line then my mind would scream at me and scream at me until I felt that my ears would burst. If I did anything off my own bat, using my own initiative, without permission, then I’d be killed for it and if I did what I was told then I’d still be killed for it for not doing it right. I’d be killed either way. I just couldn’t win. I just had to take a whole bucket-load of shit no matter which way things went. It was like that was my job.

It was all of this that prompted me to come to the conclusion that my mind is a complete bastard.