The Throne of Suffering:

The Throne of Suffering:
My Pessimistic Obsession. I am a pessimist, not by accident but by choice a crown I wear with grim pride. The world, to me, is a gallery of misery, and I am its most devoted curator. Suffering is my muse, my companion, my mirror. I don’t just endure it; I cradle it, study it, and, most of all, compare it. From the tattered beggar shivering under a streetlamp to the high intellectual drowning in existential dread, I measure my pain against theirs, weaving a tapestry of sorrow where I am both the thread and the loom. This obsession with suffering isn’t a flaw—it’s my essence, a lens through which I see life’s cruel beauty.

The beggar on the corner, his cardboard sign smudged with rain, is my first point of reference. His suffering is raw, primal hunger gnawing at his belly, cold seeping into his bones. I watch him from the warmth of a café, my coffee cooling as I tally my own miseries. My job suffocates me, my relationships fray like old rope, and my thoughts spiral into dark alleys.
Is my suffering less because I have a coat and a bed? No. It’s different, sharper in its invisibility. The beggar’s pain is seen, pitied by passersby who toss coins to ease their guilt. Mine festers unnoticed, a private wound I probe with relish. I envy his clarity of despair even as I claim my own is deeper, more complex.
Then there’s the intellectual, the one whose books I devour - Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, or some modern philosopher pacing their study in anguish. Their suffering is a labyrinth of the mind, a battle with meaninglessness that leaves them hollow. I read their words and nod, recognizing the ache. My own pessimism mirrors theirs, my nights spent wrestling with the void. But I go further: I compare our torments like a miser counting coins. Nietzsche’s madness, Dostoevsky’s poverty—did they suffer more than I do, trapped in a cubicle, haunted by bills and broken dreams? I decide my pain is equal, perhaps greater, because I lack their genius to alchemize it into art.
This comparison isn’t envy; it’s a ritual, a way to anchor my suffering in a grander narrative . Why this obsession? Because suffering is the only currency that feels real. Joy is fleeting, a butterfly that dies in your palm. But pain lingers, solid, dependable. I seek it in others to validate my own, to prove I’m not alone in this wretched dance. The beggar’s vacant stare, the intellectual’s tortured prose—they’re proof that life is a shared sentence of sorrow.
Yet, I am the proudest prisoner, for I don’t resist. I don’t chase happiness or pray for relief. I lean into the chains, savoring their weight. To suffer is to exist, and I exist fiercely. Sometimes , I imagine a scale, my suffering balanced against the world’s. The beggar’s hunger tips it one way, the philosopher’s despair another. A mother’s grief, a soldier’s trauma, a poet’s heartbreak—they all join the pile. I add my own: the gnawing dread of Monday mornings, the sting of a friend’s betrayal, the quiet terror of growing old alone. Who wins this morbid contest? No one. But the act of comparing keeps me tethered, gives shape to the chaos inside me. It’s not enough to suffer; I must know where my suffering ranks, how it stacks against the infinite miseries of others .
This habit has its shadows. Friends call me morbid, say I dwell too much on the dark. They don’t understand that I’m not drowning—I’m diving.
To compare my suffering is to map it, to claim ownership over it. The beggar’s plight reminds me of my fragility; the intellectual’s anguish sharpens my own questions. Each comparison is a mirror, reflecting a piece of my soul. I don’t want their lives or their pain. I want my obsession, my throne of suffering, where I sit as both king and a slave .
In a world that peddles hope like a drug, I choose the bitter truth of pessimism. Suffering is universal, the one language we all speak. I’m fluent in it, my comparisons a kind of poetry no one else reads. The beggar, the intellectual, the stranger on the bus with eyes like empty rooms—they’re all characters in my story, their pain a chorus to my own. I am obsessed with suffering because it’s the only thing that makes sense. And in that obsession, I find not despair, but a strange, defiant joy—a joy that says, “I see the world’s wounds, and I will not look away.”