I Was Suffering The Excruciating Misery Of The Afflicted Ego

I was in bad form. I was cranky and miserable. “I am suffering the excruciating misery of the afflicted ego”, I croaked despairingly and saying this straightaway made me feel even worse. It made me feel worse than ever and the reason for this was that I knew it to be true. “My wretchedness is beyond measure”, I wailed out loud, “for I am the afflicted ego”. Nothing good ever seemed to happen for me and all I ever seemed to do was wallow in my own toxic misery. “Where’s the kudos in this?”, I asked bitterly. I wasn’t asking anyone in particular; if anything I suppose you could say that I was addressing the world in general but the world in general wasn’t listening. The world in general didn’t care one jot about me and my plight and I knew it. It meant absolutely nothing to the world if I was suffering and afflicted…

 

The more I considered my situation the worse I felt and I can promise you that I was feeling pretty bad to start off with. That’s being too damn wishy-washy about it – I wasn’t just feeling ‘pretty bad’, I was suffering the excruciating misery of the afflicted ego. Suffering doesn’t come any more excruciating than that, I can tell you! It wasn’t just that ‘no one cared’ either – I’m sure that anyone who did know about my wretched situation would say that I was getting exactly what I deserved. They would probably say, if asked, that the circumstances I found myself in were ‘good enough for me’. Whoever has sympathy for an afflicted ego, after all? We all know that to be an ego is to have it coming to you; you reap what you sow, pride cometh before a fall, etc, etc. Let’s face it, no one likes an ego! No one sheds any tears when an ego gets what is coming to it. That’s no tragedy; on the contrary, it’s the richest possible vein of  comedy! Plenty of good old belly laughs there, I can tell you!

 

I don’t expect anyone to feel any sympathy for me. I know what they’ll say before they say it. “Good enough for him!” they’ll say, full of smug satisfaction at my comeuppance. They’ll probably be delighted to see me get what I deserve. Thinking all these thoughts about my situation was making me feel crankier and more miserable than ever. “I’m cut off from life itself”, I said to myself. I realize that I don’t even know what life is. I know nothing about life, I know only the horror of my own sterile existence and that’s not the same thing at all. That’s a different thing, entirely. As I walk down the high street I see people enjoying life all around me. They are smiling and happy and carefree, all the things that I am not. They are participating in the rich bounty of life but I’m not. They don’t even know that they’re participating – they’re doing it without knowing they’re doing it. They’re participating automatically – that’s how lucky they are! I’m excluded from life. I’m on the outside looking in. How is it possible for anyone to be as hideously alienated from life as I am, I ask myself?

 

I know the answer to that question already, however. I know the answer to that particular question very well indeed, as it happens. The reason I am hideously alienated from life is because I am completely identified with a terminally dissociated afflicted ego and the lot of a terminally dissociated afflicted ego is not a happy one. Not many laughs to be had there. Not for me, anyway. For someone else there would be for sure but then that’s not really much consolation for me. How much fun can you have whilst being terminally dissociated, after all? How well can you engage, how much ‘a part of things’ can you be? No prizes for guessing the right answer here. You know the answers to this question as well as I do. You’re probably just too polite to come right out and say it…

 

 

 

 

 

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