So you’re feeling great, your life is wonderful and meaningful, and you’re posting lovely positive memes for all you’re worth. You’re posting positive memes left, right and centre. You bet you are. Everything is fine and you’re having fantastic time – only you’re not. Isn’t that the way it is? We all know that one, don’t we? Boy oh boy oh boy how well we know that one! Tell me about it, right? Just fucking tell me about it…
I’ve got this little voice in my head that likes to look on the bright side and reason things out. It comes out with all these reassuringly positive statements. ‘Things aren’t as bad as they might initially seem,’ it says, ‘why – that could actually be quite a good thing. That thing that happened to you just now. That bad thing that happened to you just now…’ Only we mustn’t call it a bad thing, right? That’s catastrophizing, that’s ‘black-and-white thinking’. I call this little voice my ‘CBT inner fuckwit voice’ because it’s always trying to be so very reasonable, because it’s always trying to rationalise everything and paper over all the cracks. I’d actually like to smack it one really hard. I like to belt the bastard a right good one. I’d like to twat it one when it doesn’t expect it and see how it likes that. ‘Rationalise this Mr CBT inner fuckwit voice!’ I’d like to say.
‘Paper over the cracks, paper over the cracks, paper over the cracks,’ says Mr CBT inner fuckwit voice. That’s my ‘self talk’. Where would we be without self talk, right? How would we ever cope? Mr CBT inner fuckwit voice comes equipped with an infinite supply of wallpaper. That’s all he needs – just an endless supply of wallpaper. As fast as he papers over the cracks new ones appear, but so what? We can paper over them too. No shortage of wallpaper after all, is there? I’ve got six container trucks full of the stuff parked outside my front door. Six more are on the way – they should be here by early this afternoon. Three O’clock at the very latest. No need to worry…
Yes it’s great to be papering over the cracks. Those nasty old cracks – let’s get rid of them shall we? Mr CBT inner fuckwit voice thinks it’s great to be papering over the cracks anyway. It surely does. You could say that it is pretty much sold on the idea – it’ll never stop droning on tediously in the background, trying to make things seem okay, in its reassuringly rational way. ‘Let’s take another look at things now,’ says Mr CBT inner fuckwit voice in its best clinical ‘I am an expert’ tone, ‘let’s put things back in proportion here…’
‘But suppose reality is nothing but one big crack’ I feel like saying – did you ever think about that Mr CBT inner fuckwit voice? How will your scientifically-proven evidence-based wallpaper work then? You fuck. Scientists have proven, scientists have proven, scientists have proven. That’s another thing my inner fuckwit voice likes to come out with. It loves coming out with terms like ‘research has shown’ – you don’t get much more reassuring than that now do you? That’ll banish all your deep dark fears, won’t it? Scientists have proven, scientists have proven, scientists have proven…
Scientists have proven that reality is just one big crack! Paper over that you fucking rational dipstick. I’d like to see how you get on with that one. I’ll even hand you the wallpaper myself, I’ll stand here passing rolls of wallpaper to you as you paste away like some kind of possessed demon. That really would be a laugh now, wouldn’t it? That sure would be one hell of a nice way to be passing the time…
