I’m just an ordinary everyday sociopath, I began. I’m just an ordinary everyday sociopath, so if you would kindly refrain from giving me a hard time. My voice whines. I don’t know what you expect from me I really don’t. Muttering to myself, grumbling away to myself all day long. Blowing sticky saliva bubbles without meaning to. I’m panicking and there’s this voice in my head telling me not to panic. It’s the voice of the panic speaking to me: the panicky voice, the panicky old voice of that old, old panic. Stay calm now, the voice tells me. Stay calm now, whatever you do… It’s not a very calm voice though, I can tell you. Muttering and grumbling, muttering and grumbling. What’s the mutter with all this panic I asked myself and the voice that was telling me not to listen to the panic was also the panic and the voice was telling me. But that was only the panic talking, I realised. Don’t listen to the panic, don’t listen to the panic, don’t listen to the panic, I told myself in tones of the most deadly earnestness but then I realised that that this was only the panic talking too. By now the panic had developed many different voices: one of them told me act like you know what you’re doing, act like you know what you’re doing, act like you know what you know, over and over again. Yet another voice chips in warning me don’t give in to the panic, don’t give in to the panic, don’t give in to the panic. And then there was another voice insistently drilling into my head saying don’t listen to the voices don’t listen to the voices whatever you do don’t listen to the voices.

So anyway what I learned from all this is that the voice telling me to do the thing – whatever ‘the thing’ may happen to be has come about as a result of my own mental entropy. Because of the amount of mental entropy that had built up around me (my own personal entropy) I had become a figment of my own imagination – a joke even to myself… The panic was starting to hit me big time at this stage. I had to pull something out of the bag. Pull something out of the bag, pull something out of the bag, pull something out of the bag, I started to tell myself, riding the crest of a wave of pure freaked-outness, but then I realised to my horror that this was only making things worse. I am a person I told myself. I’m a person. Be a person, be a person, be a godamn person, I told myself but it wasn’t working. It wasn’t coming off right and all of a sudden I started to freak out on top of my original freakout. It was a double freakout. I didn’t know what to do – it just wasn’t coming to me. Be a person, be a person, be a person, I told myself but it was no good – it wasn’t working. Do person stuff do person stuff do persons stuff I ordered myself with the utmost severity but it just wasn’t happening. It’s no good just telling myself to be a person and do person stuff I realized then – I had to fill in the blanks myself! I had to tell myself exactly how to be a person and that was precisely what I didn’t know. Throw me a bone here I told myself give me at least something to go on would you but nothing was forthcoming – I had drawn a blank.

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