Andi t's good, at first. You're accepted by whole new communities. They feed the underlying narcissism behind the shitty masquerade, they provide affirmation and validation you've neither had nor deserved before. It's therapeutic, it makes you feel good, wanted, desired, and loved. Like you belong. You and your new community on the very frontiers of human existence. Were you ever a sad sack of shit? No, no-society was oppressing you, you're not the problem, they are! The reason you were a sad sack of shit is because society didn't accept you for what even YOU didn't realize what you were!

Down goes the estrogen pills! Down the gullet, down the hatch, down they go with a swig of whiskey! The pantomime of femininity grows more and more fervent as you proudly show off the world the new breasts that represent the new you! You must show everyone-everyone must see, this glorious achievement that will win you countless facebook likes, retweets, and upmarseys! The attention is on you! For the first time in your life, you're receiving attention from other people, and it feels so good!

The act of belonging to this new community-this cult--is not without its old requirements. Certain orthodoxies must be adhered to, or the likes and retweets might stop! Rambling on loudly (your new friends must see and hear!) about hate speech in regards to comments you yourself would have laughed at if not actually said. Your newfound hypocrisy is of little consequence when you're so greedy for the affirmation you've never felt in your squandered youth. Sure, you can try to reconcile that with your old friends through some rather unconvicing word play, equivocation, and personal revisionism, but that only deserves a half-hearted effort. After all, unlike your new friends, where they pass around insincere encouragement and ego-flattering remarks, they won't cheer to your boobie pictures nearly as hard.

The gas pedal is labeled "narcissmism," and baby, it's pedal to the metal time!

And you floor it, and suddenly, it takes up all your mental energies. How you're oppressed. How you've been oppressed all your life. How Boba Pence is going to fly in on his jetpack and give you electroshock therapy. How he's actually been hunting you across the galaxy since you were born. Your friends scream shrilly about Nazis in the closet and under the bed? Why, that's your boogeyman too! After falling asleep with bottle in hand, too drunk to realie it's rolling across the floor leaking the only friend you've had from the old days still remaining, you have a fever dream of Donald Trump goosestepping around, shoving men in cheap dresses and goldilocks wigs into the gas chamber, and you awaken in a cold sweat startled with fright! It may have been just a dream, but when you're mentally ill, when you're so fricked in the head and self-centered, it actually was your personal reality and you're going to make sure it's other people's reality, too!

But, deep down, you know the cruel, dark reality of your own existence. You're a middle aged, gross, used-up man past the prime of his life. And your prime was any other man's "wilderness years." You look in the mirror, and it's never enough. The stubble comes back, sure as Sisyphus's boulder rolls downhill. The makeup looks all wrong, because it's meant to compliment feminine features, but you possess none of those. Every night you look in the mirror and you try to ignore the screaming in the back of your mind telling you you look like Dr. Zaius in drag. Your peepee (which never saw much use) lays between your legs like some vestigial appendage reminding you that this is never who you actually were, as much as you want it to be the you now. At this point, the pedal is pushed so hard your foot goes through the floor, the fantasy play and pretend and exaggerated female signifiers and behaviors become more and more intense as you try to keep the Disneyland magic going in spite of the perverse truth.

This, my students, is the sad case of T_Dumbsford. Do not feel too sad for him, however, my students-they say laughter is the very best medicine. Oh, no, no, not for him, silly, no, for us! Laughter is the best medicine for the ordinary person to deal with the ridiculously absurd and pathetic. The real victims are us, for we are forced to share this world with an unsufferable, self-righteous, narcissistic prick compensating for his wasted life and wasted liver.