‘I’m great, I’m great, I’m great – I’m great and doing all the great things…’ I told myself. This was my positive self-talk you see. Positive self talk is very important of course. It’s very important indeed. I have to stress how extraordinarily important it is. Where would we be without it, after all? Where would we be, where would we be? The positive self talk is all very important for our self-esteem as I’m sure you already know. Where would we be without all of that good old positive self-talk? In a shit place, that’s for sure. In a very shit place! The bad things can be very bad can’t they? They surely can. I’m always amazed by how bad the bad things can be. I’m not surprised though because I always knew that to be the case. Bad things are very bad and there’s just no getting around that.

It’s a real effort though isn’t it? It’s such an effort. Keeping up the show, keeping up the charade, keeping up the tired old pretence. It’s a terrible effort – it’s the type of an effort that drains you of every large drop of life. That’s what I find myself anyway. I often try to obtain some kind of validation from people on that score. I will broach the subject, I throw it out there, I run it up the flagpole and see how it flaps. Flap, flap, flap. I bring the issue out into the open. People are such bastards though. I’m sorry to say that but I can’t think of another way of putting it – people really are such bastards.

I put it to them that all this pretending, all this fakery, all this ‘making out that we’re having such a great time when we aren’t’ is such terribly hard work and then they just stare at me blankly with that terrible blank look that they all have. Either that or they are angry and judgemental and full of toxic contempt. All that fakery, all that bloody old toxic fakery. ‘I’m great, I’m great, I’m great….’ I told myself first thing this morning, before the old inner critic got a chance to cut in and wear me down with his constant carping negativity. We all have to cope – as best we can – with that the old inner critic, don’t we?

“You pathetic little shit-head,” my inner critic told me scornfully, when it finally got its chance to stick its oar in, “are you really that dense that you think saying ‘I’m great I’m great I’m great’ over and over again is going to change anything? Even you couldn’t be stupid enough to believe that!” My inner critic went into utter paroxysms of laughter at this – it laughed long and loud and it was a very hearty type of laughter too. I knew that I was affording my inner critic very genuine amusement and that didn’t do my self-esteem much good.

‘I’m great, I’m great, I’m great, I’m great’ I started up again, defiantly. That’s my positive self-talk you see. ‘I’m great and I’m doing lots of great things….’ In the background I can hear my inner critic splitting its sides. It’s pissing itself. If it carries on like this it will do itself an injury, it occurs to me. Not that I would be particularly upset by that of course.

It’s the fakery of people I can’t stand, needless to say. It’s the sheer bloody fakery. They couldn’t tell you a true thing even if their lives depended upon it. It’s the bloody fakery, the bloody old fakery. They’ll never admit to it, though. They’ll never admit to the fakery you see – never in a million years will they admit to it…