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349
The Journal of a Disappointed Man
·
W. N. P. Barbellion
120
February
15.
To-day
I
have
reviewed
the
situation
carefully,
exhaustively.
I
have
peered
into
every
aspect
of
my
life
and
achievements
and
everything
I
have
seen
nauseates
me.
I
can
find
no
ray
of
comfort
in
anything
I
have
done
or
in
anything
I
might
do.
My
life
seems
to
have
been
a
wilderness
of
futile
endeavour.
I
started
wrong
from
the
very
beginning.
At
the
moment
of
my
birth
I
was
coming
into
the
world
in
the
wrong
place
and
under
wrong
conditions.
Why
seek
to
overcome
such
colossal
initial
disadvantages?
In
this
mood
I
found
fault
with
my
parentage,
my
inheritance,
all
my
mental
and
physical
disabilities....
This
must
be
a
form
of
incipient
insanity.
Even
as
a
boy,
I
can
remember
being
preternaturally
absorbed
in
myself
and
preternaturally
discontented.
I
was
accustomed
to
exhaust
my
mind
by
the
most
harassing
cross-examinations--no
Counsel
at
the
Bar
ever
treated
a
witness
more
mercilessly.
After
a
day
of
this
sort
of
thing,
when
silently
and
morbidly
in
every
spare
moment,
at
meals,
in
school,
or
on
a
walk,
I
would
incessantly
ply
the
questions,
"What
is
the
ultimate
value
of
your
work,
cui
bono?"
etc.
I
went
to
bed
in
the
evening
with
a
feeling
of
hopelessness
and
dissatisfaction--haggard
with
considerations
and
reconsiderations
of
my
outlook,
my
talent,
my
character,
my
future.
In
bed,
I
tossed
from
side
to
side,
mentally
exhausted
with
my
efforts
to
obtain
some
satisfying
conclusion--always
hopeful,
determined
to
the
last
to
be
able
to
square
up
my
little
affairs
before
going
to
sleep.
But
out
of
this
mazy,
vertiginous
mass
of
thinking
no
satisfaction
ever
came.
Now,
I
thought--or
the
next
moment--or
as
soon
as
I
review
and
revise
myself
in
this
or
in
that
aspect,
I
shall
be
content.
And
so
I
went
on,
tearing
down
and
reforming,
revising
and
reviewing,
till
finally
from
sheer
exhaustion
and
very
unhappy
I
fell
asleep.
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