Autocritiques

Paranoia, W. says. Have I always felt paranoid?Do I really think someone's watching me, that my footsteps are being followed? In truth, I'm only following myself, W. says. In truth, I only stalk myself, in horror at myself, and not only of what I have become.

That I am at all: that's what causes my paranoia, W. says. That I even exist: even I know, W. says; even I know somewhere that I am entirely at fault.

Of course, I didn't ask to be born, W. grants that. Which one of us did? But I was born, and that's the problem – my problem, W. says, and everyone's problem.

And isn't that why my life is a series of autocritiques?, W. wonders. Isn't that why it has always resembled a kind of staged confession, a show trial, in which I repent for everything I have done and even in the end, the fact that I did anything at all; and indeed that I was, that even existed in the first place.

It wasn't me! That's what I want to cry to the world. It wasn't my fault! But it was me, W. says; it was my fault, and indeed my only, basic fault: that I ever lived at all.