swedetrap

“Do you know who I am?”

What a strange and wonderous question. Do I know who you are? Should I? Would it bother you if I did not? Has it ever occurred to you that if you must ask that question, chances are quite good that no, I do not know who you are? It’s rather like that adage that if you must inquire about the price, you probably can’t afford it. Same insult; (mostly) different application.

In this instance though, you’re using social standing vs. economic standing to emphasize your pretend importance. That importance only exists in your own small mind, of course, where certainly everyone must know who you are, right? After all, you’ve spent hours, days, even months, peacocking in front of those you’ve placed below you on the social ladder, meticulously cultivating your outward image as the Grand Pooh-Bah of your very own Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes – an organization of zero real-world worth but exalted in confines of your own mind.

How sad I must be then, not only to be ignorant of your supposed standing, but resilient to your self-serving charms and content in my own life, which has been quite happy and successful despite having no idea who you are. Yes, in your mind I am but a pathetic plebian, unwise to your greatness and glory – I mean, I must be, for I have no idea who you are.

But who are you really?

To me, you would appear to be nothing more than a large, bipedal bag of wind! Barely more than a sack full of plastic-wrapped dog excrement that one would find in any common park. A waste both in love and in life, and wholly incapable of having relationships that aren’t purely transactional. Oh sure, you’re married and even have a child or two, but they serve you like subjects in the world’s tiniest little castle, built for its tiniest of kings, or at least in your mind they do. You’ve bought and paid for them all, sent them to fine colleges, only to see them struggle, repeatedly, at life’s most basic tasks. They did not, after all, have a father to love and teach them, but rather a Lord to rule over them, doling out praise when their accomplishments reflected well on you, and causing you grief and anger when they suffered more, er, “human” problems.

Why else would you spend hours in the sterile beige stall of a public restroom, weeping into your hands, your sorrow sounding more like a dying aquatic mammal than a man? What sort of Lord does such a thing, if not the sort that grants himself his title versus earning it? The sort that truly never lives up to the role of father, husband, or man. The sort whose ego is more inflated with each passing year as he struggles aimlessly to regain the respect that he fooled himself into believing he once had at all.

You’re no Lord. You’re no hero. You’re no man. Certainly not by any traditional or even modern meanings of any of those words.

You’re only you. And you will die alone, already forgotten because no one knew or cared who you were to begin with. Your friends and family only a trail of transactions along the way.

I am nobody and I know who you are. I am nobody and I laugh at your question. And that is what hurts you the most.