Sometimes, even with the best of intentions and hard work, your life doesn’t go the way you’d hoped or planned or dreamed. Your heart is broken. Your mind is spinning. You fall to the ground with disappointment, despair. An old feeling of dread comes to visit, a familiar sense of cosmic abandonment. There’s a sinking feeling in the gut, a tightness in the throat, a pressure in the head.
‘I screwed up.’ In the midst of your hurt, you are tempted to turn against the world, or yourself. Seek revenge, retribution. Or attack yourself, with addictive behaviour. Quick, numb the pain. Drink something, eat something, buy something, try not to feel something.
You label yourself ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ or ‘broken’. You call yourself a ‘failure’, a ‘waste of space’, words you learned when you were young. Then your mind spins o into the future. Not only a day of failure, but a lifetime of failure, ending in death.