psyche

I’m not sure what it is. There are few people who are very good at a game but choose to resist the allure of profundity. Most competitors will begin to become so entwined in their art that they become ideal gamers and really don’t have to win all the time - they learn and adapt - but as a result of this, they do win. The few that keep the “play to win” attitude develop differently, training with demented intensity and becoming elitist to the core. I prefer this approach, to be honest. It is simpler and clearer, even if it’s less genuine - there’s no genius-level understanding, just hard work and foresight.

Perhaps this is a reaction to my own major malfunction (apart from having a small penis and being a nerd) - I’m not very good at maths. Granted I’m good enough and will probably not be really bothered by it in terms of employment or interpersonal life etc. but I have a cringing feeling that I know is accurate which tells me that it will bother me my whole life. Perhaps I’m just lazy. I don’t know what it is. What takes other people seconds to understand takes me minutes. Systems which I have interest in confuse me unendingly. It’s infuriating and cruel; I am just too stupid. I think I’ll make the best of it and on the surface it’ll look like I’ve conquered it and am happy to suck at chess and connect 4 and be unable to make simple arithmetical calculations as fast as the average eight-year-old, but tragically I don’t think I will ever forgive myself.

Pssht. Where did I go wrong? I don’t know. I’m not so bad that it’ll impede my life but it’s bad enough to hold me back from any kind of excellence. There is now nothing that I can say “Yeah, that’s what I do. It’s what I’m good at and what I’ll always be good at.” I don’t think there ever was.

I also think something else is wrong; sometimes when I see shadows moving or trees rustling in my peripheral vision, I think they’re people. Not like, I stop and consider the motion and think “Hmm, it might be a person…” but my gut reaction - what my brain immediately decides - is that it’s a person or animal or something, because I immediately freeze and have to look round etc.

I don’t know what it is. I don’t think I ever will. I predict I’ll always be stupid enough to fail to achieve really remarkable things, but work hard and have enough intelligence to seem like a hardworking unintelligent person or a lazy and slightly intelligent person.

So when you feel my contemptible loser’s gaze at your back, know that I am not ignorant. I am consciously aware of my failure. With slow applause I praise those of you with natural talent or the willpower to really be excellent. I, it seems, am a total fraud. My success is isolated and requires really hard work. I don’t know why it is!

Every part of me is disgusted by what I am; there are people with situations so many hundreds of times worse than my own that I cannot even begin to express my dismay at what a self-pitying wretch I am.

I wish I knew what it was all about! I don’t think I’ll gratify myself by descending into depression or anger. I’ll even smile, look: *smiles*. This is absurd. For fuck’s sake. If in months or years I look back on this and think “Ah, at least I predicted that my stupidity would persist in ruining my life like a crayon up my nose… I must’ve been somewhat intelligent…”†

Also, fuck.

Pax

† Hey, if I can’t fucking make bad jokes, I can’t do anything, right?

Note to future self:
Work hard, you fool! There’s a chance your intellectual inadequacy can be overcome! This is no fiction, where people are strange like you! This is life! Be a man!