I exist, I am a person, I say to myself in a frantic attempt to make sense of my situation. I really do exist, I really am a person. Everything is strange to me – I really don’t know anything about anything anymore. The world jumps out at me like a jack-in-the-box, like some kind of unaccountable hallucination. It flashes back at me from every angle, defying me to try to understand it. I remember that I used to understand things. I used to understand lots of things. Now I understand nothing. The very idea of ‘understanding’ feels alien to me. I don’t know what that means any more. I exist, I am a person I tell myself over and over again. I really do exist. I have the distinct feeling that I am lying to myself when I say this and this awareness is far from being a benign one. I am employing understatement here – I am sure that, given the nature of the ‘affirmations’ (how I loathe that term) I have been detailing, you can appreciate just how disturbing it is for me to be aware that I am lying to myself as I keep repeating this pathetic refrain. It’s one thing to lie to oneself and believe the lies but it’s another thing entirely another when the lies ring hollow…
‘I exist, I am a person,’ I tell myself earnestly, for the ten zillionth time. I wish I could stop – the words have a hideous quality. I am split in two – the one who can’t stop lying and the one who can no longer believe the lies. Lies that one can believe are the ultimate commodity, it occurs to me. They are sweet like honey, sweet like opium, sweet like heroin. What would I not give for a lie I could believe? That blessed moment when one hears a lie that one can unquestioningly believe! What would I not give for that? What do we human beings value above all else? I will answer that question for you – it is what we call ‘the truth’ and what we call the truth is simply the lie that we can believe. When the mouthpieces of society rave incessantly about what is true – as they always do – they are raving about what they have successfully deluded us into believing. They are raving about the lie they have successfully called the truth. That’s why they get so excited about it. That’s why hearing our leaders talk about the truth always leaves such a bad taste in the mouth – the same as when they go on about justice or freedom or equality of any of these things. Things that they by their very nature are always fundamentally opposed to.
As I say, there is nothing I would not give for a lie that I could readily believe, but the problem is simply that I have nothing left to give. I have nothing, I am nothing, and so I am not in a very good position for making any bargains. I’ve run out of bargaining chips. My position is defunct. I have nothing left but my hollow affirmations and they are worse than nothing at all. The air is ringing with these awful hollow affirmations of mine – they hang in the air all around me like carrion birds. They watch me with their beady carrion-loving eyes, waiting for their chance to close in. There is a rank smell from them that makes me want to gag. It is the rankest of all possible smells – the smell of a lie that no longer has any power to convince. I exist, I am a person, I tell myself. I’m really here. That’s what life’s like when you live in the Denial World, as I’m sure you know. You know it as well as I do, after all. That’s how it is – either the lies work and that is fine, or they don’t and then you’re screwed.
