I feel bad that I feel good.
Somebody once said that brilliant sentence to me.
And if you are nodding along in recognition — that is not good news.
I do not know when it happened and I am not especially interested, but you have learned to feel guilty a second and a half after you feel good.
And a moment before you settle comfortably into the position of the martyr, please remember that we are human beings, with appetites, drives and hormones.
Here is the part that people who live this way never see coming, and it is the reason this is worth taking seriously rather than admiring.
One day you will get tired of not feeling good.
And then you will explode at somebody out of sheer accumulated frustration.
And that somebody will have no idea where it came from — because from the outside, nothing preceded it. They did not watch you decline the small pleasures for eleven months. They only saw the eruption, which will look to them like a disproportionate reaction to a minor thing, and which will be filed accordingly.
That is the actual cost of the arrangement. Not your own discomfort, which you have made a sort of peace with, but the fact that the bill is eventually presented to whoever happens to be standing nearby.
So you would do well to organise for yourself, fairly quickly, a consistent way of feeling good.
Because nobody deserves to catch the ricochet.