I was in a dark, dark place. Was anyone ever in such a dark place as the one I was in, I wondered? I don’t think anyone ever has been in such a dark, dark place as the one I was in. Not like this place. There was only me in it. I was all alone in the dark, dark place and there’ was no way for me ever to get out of it.

I’d been playing the game again – the old, old game. You know that old game. Everybody knows that old, old game! Everybody knows it because it’s so very old, everybody knows it because everyone’s always been playing it! There is no one that doesn’t know that old, old game; there’s no one who hasn’t been playing it…

I was all alone in the dark, dark place and I had no love for myself. I had no love at all. I had only a terrible, terrible all-consuming hatred – a frightening hatred that destroyed everything it touched. I had no love for anyone or anything else either – I was in a world made up only of myself and I hated myself with an ice cold passion. I hated myself because it was me that it got me into it this place. It was my fault that I was there and it was my fault that I could never leave and I could never forgive myself for that. I was in a world made up only of myself and I hated that world.

I had got myself into the dark, dark place by playing the game. The game had taken me to that place the same way it always does. That’s the only thing that playing the game can ever do! It always takes you to the dark, dark place where there’s nothing else but you and where you hate yourself so very much for being there. It’s the inevitable endpoint and the thing about inevitable endpoints is that you might as well be there already because that’s the only place you’re going to go. You’re already there just as soon as you start playing that old, old game. You’re there already and you always have been. That’s how the place works – it’s a type of black-hole that nothing can escape from, not even the possibility of once having not been there…

Can you blame me for feeling so negative, now that I’m here in this terrible dark place? Can you blame me for having nothing left to me but this all-consuming self-loathing, which eats everything up like a corrosive acid? There’s nothing else left to me – there’s just me and this very bad relationship that I have with myself!

It’s a very cold, very empty place that I’m in you see and there’s nothing I can do to distract myself any more. Nothing works any more. Nothing does the trick any more. It was great when I used to be able to distract myself by playing the good old game. That’s why I played it of course – I played it in order to distract myself from noticing how bad it felt NOT to play it! That’s why we all play the game. I don’t really need to say that, do I? That’s obvious. That’s why we all play the game. (That’s why we all, that’s why we all, that’s why we all play that old, old game).