Feeling Wrong

What's that familiar feeling of the self? I'm just sitting here, doing this. What does that feel like? A lot of times, it doesn't seem to feel like anything. I have physical sensations, my upper back is hurting....

When I was very young, I felt like I was the center of the world, the center of the universe, the center of everything. I thought that everything that happened had something to do with me, that my mere presence affected everything that I perceived.

Because of this, whenever anything went wrong, I thought it was my fault. Of course, things often went wrong, and so I got the sense that I was very bad, fundamentally problematic. And, no one told me differently. In fact sometimes, people told me that I was a failure.

I didn't know exactly how I was bad, because it wasn't one thing or another that seemed to be my fault; it could've been anything. And so that general sense of wrongness within me grew. I couldn't think well enough to make sense of it...I was just too young, and my mind still hadn't developed much of an ability to reason.