‘I became an ego, I became a self…’ I chanted viciously. I refused to look anyone in the eye, chanting under my breath as if I was talking to myself. I wasn’t though – that was just pure theatre. It was meant for other people to hear. I was being passive aggressive, I was refusing to communicate directly. I was pretending to talk to myself but really I was hoping that someone would overhear me so that they would know how unhappy I was. ‘A faulty script is slowing your brain down, what you want to do about it?’ my operating system was asking me. I didn’t know what I wanted to do – I couldn’t make up my mind. A faulty script is fucking your life up, more likely. People often used to confront me and tell me that I was passive-aggressive but I would always refuse to admit to that. I refused admit to it even to myself. I was putting on a show but there was no audience. It wasn’t a very interesting show after all. Even I wasn’t interested. Especially I wasn’t interested. It was a homemade nightmare that I was locked into…

I was resentful over the fact I had to be me but I didn’t know how to articulate this to myself. I’m not very articulate  – I don’t have much in the way of emotional intelligence – I couldn’t have expressed myself to save my life and even if did have better skills in this department I wouldn’t have known what it was that it needed to express. Cruel, isn’t it? It’s cruel just how screwed up we can become. Even when a person doesn’t possess any other talents he or she will still have this one – the talent to self-sabotage, the talent to make a hideous mess of one’s life. Did you ever notice that? I’ve noticed that – I think about that an awful lot as it happens. You might even say that I brood upon it incessantly. Or do I mean insistently? One or the other anyway.

I suppose what I’m saying here is that we all have ways of making life harder for ourselves. Not content with the big heap of suffering we already have on our plates, we go asking around for more. It’s no wonder people find it so hard to feel compassion for themselves, isn’t it? It’s no wonder at all – deep down we know we don’t deserve it, no matter what all the love gurus say. They’re only trying to make a quick buck for themselves anyway; they’re trying to guilt-trip us into trying to be kind to ourselves. What – you’re judging yourself and being mean to yourself? What an absolute bastard you must be. Shame on you. Shame on you, you lousy mean-spirited judgemental scumbag you. Obviously we do hate ourselves – why else would we keep on doing the dirty on ourselves in the way that we do if this wasn’t the case? It is apparent – to my way of thinking at least – that we must be drawing from a very deep well of malice. ‘How deep,’ you ask earnestly, keen to obtain as much information as you possibly can. I’m not going to say more about it in this. It must suffice to say that the well in question is unusually, spookily deep, you might even say.

My point is that everyone is gifted at something, even if it is only at making an unholy mess of your own life for no good reason at all. ‘And what good reason could there be for making an unholy mess of one’s life?’ I hear you ask, somewhat sardonically. I must concede that point to you I suppose – I must be more careful with my words. I get carried away with the sound of things you see, and, and consequently I’m prone to continuing in a certain vein even when it no longer makes sense to do so. ‘Know when to stop,’ is the motto here, I think. Know to stop, know where to draw the line. My problem is precisely that I don’t, of course. Although it’s not really the knowing that is the difficult thing but the acting on the knowing. I know all right – I know it very clearly indeed but that still doesn’t make a blind bit of difference. There’s something rather frightening about noticing that one has reached the point at which it would be a very good idea to stop and yet –  – despite this having this ominous awareness – one finds oneself charging ahead just the same. You’d wonder, wouldn’t you, what this is all about? Is there no limit to the pain we are willing to put ourselves through?

Or maybe you don’t wonder; maybe – like me – you suspect that you already know the answer to this question only too well? The answer is malice – pure undiluted malice, infinite malice, malice the extent and the intensity of which defies all ordinary human understanding. The cold, calculating intention that we all have (or at least some of us have) to make life as hard for ourselves as we possibly can. We witter on about self-respect, self-care, self-nurturing behaviour and all that kind of stuff but how believable is that crap, when it comes down to it? I personally see no evidence for it; look at this laughably stupid and revoltingly obnoxious world that we have created for ourselves, for example – how can anyone look at this world of ours and say that we have respect for ourselves, or say that we have any regard for ourselves at all?