“Is there ever a point at which all one’s luck and all one’s freedom runs out?” I asked this question both rhetorically and ironically, as is my wont. I was addressed the imaginary crowd in my head, waving my arms around expressively. The crowd cheered wildly. The crowd always cheers wildly. They rejoice in everything I say, and why wouldn’t they?
“Is there a point at which the awareness of the utterly appalling futility of the endeavour or project which one is engaged in becomes so great, so oppressive, so overwhelming that one simply cannot carry on with it?” I asked again. “No” roared the crowd back at me – only it was more of an angry mob than a crowd at this stage – “There never is such a point – that point can never happen and you can carry on forever if you really want to. You NEVER have to give up on it, not EVER….”
All my luck run out a long, time ago, you see, so that now all I have left to me are my fantasies. The poor fantasies you see before you. As you might imagine, I have become completely alienated from reality by living in these decaying fantasies of mine, and yet I still won’t give them up. We all do that of course. We spend every waking minute of our days denying reality for all we’re worth and pretending we’re not doing it. That’s just the type of creature we are. Which is truth-denying creatures! All my luck ran out a long time ago, you see, and ever since then I’ve been running into problems like you wouldn’t believe. Real bad ones, I can tell you. Rotten lousy ones that never let up.
“So what exactly is the problem?” people ask me nastily, trying to make out that I’m some kind of gobshyte, trying to make out that I’m a laughable eejit. “You are,” I generally reply, “the problem is you and everyone like you. The problem is all of you bastards, in fact. Every last dirty one of you. You’re all a bunch of dirty liars, lying nonstop all of the time…
I’m projecting, of course – always projecting. Projecting, projecting, projecting. It’s the classic sign of insanity, of course. When you lose your connection with the real world then you spend all your time cocooning. ‘Cocooning’ – for those of you who don’t know what that is – is when you never leave your bubble. When you lose your connection and get into cocooning instead of ‘connecting’ then you spend all your time (from morning to night) getting irritated and pissed off and wound up with your own dumb-ass projections. They will attack you whenever they get a chance. You will eventually get so wound up that it will only be a matter of time before until you snap completely. Like really snap, if you get me. You’ll snap so badly that you’ll never be right again! By God you won’t…
“What is your name?” I asked the Pretending Self, the self which we all try so very hard to be. “Come on own up – who are you really?” I got no answer, though – I was being stonewalled, and most professionally too. It was doing a job on me and no mistake. “You’re a stinking lousy fake!” I finally screamed, losing my cool entirely. Losing my dignity (what I had of it, at least). Losing my self-respect. The Pretending Self was me all along of course, only it wasn’t owning up to it. You bet it wasn’t – that’s the last thing it was ever going to do. It isn’t ever going to own up to anything (no matter what) because that’s just the type of fake, good-for-nothing shit that it is.
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