At what point should you stop psychoanalyzing yourself? When is the shrink’s work ever really done? If you unpack all your boxes and empty out all your baggage, is there anything left inside your home? If you wash your hands for long enough, your skin will peel away. If you use enough shampoo, your hair will fall out. You get a nose job and someone says, “Oh, but I liked it the way it was before.” You retort, “But why? It was crooked.” They shrug, “I don’t know. I guess it was more you.” To the selfless person, the standard advice: you have to take care of yourself. To the selfish person, the standard advice: you should think more about others. I have only one chip left on my shoulder. All the others have either been sanded down by my boss, anointed and bandaged by my girlfriend, or politely plucked and discarded by my maturing friends. If any of you come any closer to my one last chip I’ll scream. I’ll writhe like Alex the droog under attack by the eye-opening claws of conformity and assimilation. Leave me this one chip, please. Or else there won’t be a me anymore. Whatever the hell me being me is worth to anybody, I don’t know. Asking what it’s worth is what got all my other chips blown away in the first place. I don’t care what it’s worth. I don’t care if it’s irrational, unjust, careless, contrarian, or the opposite end of any other binary that you’ve invented and chosen your side of. I’ll take the other side. Even if it’s just me over here and the whole rest of the world over there. At least I’ll be me.