War

In the end, it's the self-loathing that does you in. She knew this. Or at least she pretended she knew this. That was one way of coping with it, and that was her way so least said about it the better. If you reconstruct reality pleasantly enough, it seems winkingly real and that's enough to satisfy all but the most exacting.

Ah, that man in the leather jacket checked me out in the bus, I must be pretty, she would think. Or she goes out of her way to find me and talk to me, I must be a nice person otherwise why would she like me? I got invited to their party and theirs and theirs and theirs, clearly I'm popular. Sometimes, the polish wore thin. And for a moment, the glimpse of self-loathing was confusing. Was the self-loathing the real part of reality or was the nonself-liking of her the real-er?. If her judgment couldn't be trusted then surely everyone else's could be? But a-ha, the hole in the donut of logic: if I can't trust my own judgment how can I esteem my-self.

She sometimes wondered if she was insane. But then if you wonder about your state of sanity, you have to BE sane. Or so she thought she remembered someone else saying. And other people were so sure of their opinions so they must be right. Why couldn't she be like them. Fitting in was easy, it was *knowing* that you fit in. That was the tricky bit. But that was just her opinion and she had just proved that her opinion wasn't worth much. No wonder she loathed herself. At least I'm showing good judgment in that, she would think.

And so, as Billy Pilgrim would have said, it goes.