I had created a validating environment for myself and it was working pretty darn well. Can’t you tell from the intolerably smug expression plastered all over my face? I’m rubbing my hands together in glee. Feeling pretty validated, feeling pretty validated, heh, heh, heh…..

I’m so sick of myself though – that’s the other side of the coin. Being sick of yourself is a terrible thing – it’s hard to actually be yourself and be totally sick of yourself, totally contemptuous of yourself at the same time. It’s a conflicted situation – you are yourself (obviously) – you can’t get away from that – and yet you loathe and despise yourself beyond all measure. You loathe and despise yourself because you know yourself only too well. You hate yourself because you know that you’re full of shit.

Your body is small and wizened, and your arms are so very weak. It’s a terrible shock to realise how weak your arms are – they’re like two lengths of overcooked spaghetti hanging uselessly by your sides. Your legs are frighteningly weak too; you realise how very weak your legs are – there is no strength in them left in them at all. You try to get your feet but you can’t and your legs collapse underneath you immediately. They fold under the weight of your body – small and wizened though it is. You realise that you have given all your strength away and that now you’re too weak to exist.

You have had lots of experiences, some good and some bad. Mostly bad. You are travelling through a hellscape and weird, uncanny scenes are unfolding all around you. Dreadful grinding noises shake the ground under your feet, causing you great foreboding. You are making your way though some kind of industrial landscape – you can see countless tall factory chimneys all along the horizon. Plumes of black smoke are rising into the sky and the atmosphere is toxic. Every time you take a breath you feel yourself choking on that impure air. People are doing bad things to each other all around you. Some people are killing other people – they kill somebody and moments later they kill the same person all over again. It happens over and over again. The same moment is recycled eternally and the horror is just as real, just as vivid, every time. You cannot make sense of the horrors that you see…

We are all warriors of course, but some of us are terrified warriors, some of us are frightened warriors. Some of us are in full panic-flight, trying to run away from our own brains! We’re running for all we’re worth. Some of us are desperately trying to hide. I am one of those terrified warriors, in full flight from the horrors of my own brain. Maddened by fear, I am trying to make myself not be here. I don’t have the courage to exist anymore. This is my mantra – “I’m not here, I’m not here, I’m not here, I’m not here….”

The mantra always works in the end. We turn to stone. We become like statues – oblivious, unconscious, comatose… We dream our dark, endlessly-troubled dreams. We don’t know who we are anymore. We have forgotten everything, we have forgotten our names. In the choking darkness of our subterranean dreams, we struggle impotently against terrifying enemies…