I Cannot Feel Ok
By Simon Barget
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Intro
If I haven’t yet run today (I haven’t), I cannot feel ok
Girls
If I don’t have a girlfriend at this very moment, which I don’t; or a wife, fuckbuddy or partner, I cannot feel ok
If all the girls who rejected me over the years rejected me as I recall they did reject me, then I cannot feel ok
If I haven’t matched with at least one or two of those attractive women on Tinder and Happn who I like and foster a deep contempt for in equal measure and who I never imagined for a second would like me back which they inevitably didn’t with all their oblique trussed-up pouty profiles I’ve spent a cumulative of days swiping over over the last few years, then I cannot feel ok
If the girl ends up not being Jewish, I probably cannot feel ok anyway
If I don’t presently have kids, which I don’t, I cannot feel ok
If I don’t have kids very shortly then I’ll be too old to have kids, and I cannot feel ok
If I end up having kids then I won’t know how to cope with them, and the prospect of that happening means that I cannot feel ok
If I have, come to think of it, never been in a long-term relationship or hardly ever even had a girlfriend, I cannot feel ok
Therapy
If I didn’t manage to even drink at the last Ayahuasca retreat for the second time in a row, I cannot feel ok
If I haven’t tried all possible therapeutic treatments with a great effort and earnestness and dedication and a resolve to make myself better as my mother and sister tell me I should be doing, then I cannot be ok
If I haven’t given anti-depressants a really good go and not just stopped taking them after they made me feel close to suicidal, I cannot feel ok
If I have not at least thought about going back to my therapist who was pretty decent and more importantly very good value at £40 an hour, I cannot feel ok
If I have not slept through the night which I have only done maybe ten times since I was 26, and not not woken up at 4 and then woken up exhausted at 8:30 and then sloughed back into bed until 10:30, I cannot feel ok
Until I try Ayahuasca again and drink a bucket load and it blasts me into an alternative reality and causes the death experience, I cannot feel ok
Money
If I haven’t paid back the 80k or whatever ungodly sum I owe my mother from the last ten years of hardly working at all, I cannot feel ok
If I don’t make a lot of money very shortly and in an improbably short period of time or at least have the prospect of doing so (in the region of say 100k), I cannot feel ok
If I stay living here in London in my comfortable flat and not moving to say, Tokyo, or not downsizing or moving out of overcooked London, I cannot feel ok
People and social relations
If I have no plans for today (or ever) which I don’t think I do, or at least not the plans I really want or expect to have given how exceptional and charismatic I am, then I cannot feel ok
If no one gets in touch, which inevitably means on WhatsApp in these emotionally barren times, which I don’t deserve anyway because I should be making an effort and not waiting for people to think about me when they all lead such tremendously busy lives what with all their kids and everything, how ridiculous to think that they’d ever think about me, then I cannot feel ok
If I have an argument or any cross words with anyone that leaves a bad taste or some simmering resentment, I am always wrong and bad, and I definitely cannot feel ok
If I don’t get Facebook likes every ten minutes for things I haven’t even posted, I cannot feel ok
If I haven’t written something which results in genuine Facebook approval but only from the people I want the approval from, then I cannot feel ok
Backgammon
If I haven’t just played a few games of backgammon at a very high skill level as verified by the prevailing gold standard of backgammon computer programs, eXtreme Gammon, I cannot feel ok
If my rating on the Backgammon Galaxy is not over 2200 at this particular moment, then I cannot feel ok
If I have not stopped playing backgammon for at least three days and started to do something much more relational and wholesome with my life because I resolved to do so in a moment of clarity after my first Ayahuasca retreat where I realised that playing is a bottomless call for validation and needing to have my ego cemented into this thing that can only have value as one of the world’s top backgammon players, which validation never comes, I can guarantee you, then I cannot feel ok
Miscellaneous
Until I have delivered my 2017-2018 company accounts to Companies House, I cannot feel ok
If I have not taken both the food caddy bag and the main recycling rubbish bag to our lavish new communal bin area, I cannot feel ok
If I happen to remember that when I started measuring my blood pressure with my mother’s blood pressure device that it was scarily high no matter the calmness I stone-faced myself into and how many times I repeated it ‘cos it must have been wrong, I cannot be ok
Until I start winter-swimming in the men’s pond on Hampstead Heath in obscenely cold temperatures I cannot be ok
Until the urine-sodden carpet in the second-bedroom is replaced, I cannot be ok
If I insist on keeping the cat who soils the second-bedroom carpet even though I love her more than anything in this world, then I deserve to have urine-sodden carpet, and I cannot be ok
Appearance
If I catch a glance of my bald patch in an upward mirror and find that it is really much wider than I genuinely thought and certainly big enough to be an independent self-sufficient entity, I cannot feel ok
And then, if someone shows me a photo of me and the camera angle happens to emphasise how puny and slight of frame I am, and I happen to home in on this fact, then I cannot feel ok
If I am now 44, which I am, I cannot be ok
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Comments
loving a cat who pees in the
loving a cat who pees in the second bedroom is more than OK
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