Big Boy

The day didn't just crush me; it methodically erased me.

It didn't get off to a good start anyway. Earlier that morning, during yet another team meeting, my colleagues kept talking over me and cutting me off, as was their habit for the last few months. By the end of the meeting, I just gave up trying.

Though the morning had already knocked me down, the afternoon kept piling on. As I vented to my usual confidante at work, he rolled his eyes and snapped, "Come on, put your big-boy pants on," before turning on his heel. I stood there, stunned, swallowing the blow.

But the day wasn’t finished with me yet, as the commute home offered no relief. When I stepped onto the metro car, a woman shoved past me, rushing to claim the last empty seat I was clearly heading for. She sat down, completely ignoring me. I gritted my teeth and quietly accepted my daily share of incivility.

So I decided to anesthetize my misery by doomscrolling Instagram for the rest of the ride. Between cute cat videos, the algorithm casually dropped a photo of Wally right in my face. Wally had dumped me three months earlier, by text. There he was, radiant and smiling on a café terrace and clearly in very good company. I was still thinking about him. He had obviously moved on.

By early evening, I was finally home. At least here, nobody would bother me. It was my sacred space, the one place people louder, faster, or brighter than me couldn't invade. I unlocked the door, tossed my bag aside, and let out a weary sigh. I wasn't just tired; I was completely hollowed out.

That’s when I heard a sniveling whine echoing from the living room. I glanced in. A complete stranger was sprawled out on my velvet armchair!

An obese guy. A long, bright yellow tie dangled well below his belt, drawing the eye away from a body that seemed to be screaming its way out of its shirt. His bright orange complexion looked like the result of an overworked spray tan, and a mass of yellow hair shaped like a wave trembled with each of his indignant sighs. He occupied the room with the scandalous audacity of an American president.

Crushing despair swept through me as I realized the cruel logic of my situation: even my own home, my final sanctuary, had been taken from me. There was really nothing left of me.

The ogre agitated his small, angry fists, pointing an accusing index finger at me while hammering out staccato phrases:

"It’s sad, really very sad!" he bellowed, beating time on my rug. "Complete disasters! Absolute wrecks! Total LOSERS!"

I blinked in disbelief. "Who... who are you?"

"People should pay big money to hear what you have to say, Sam! Believe me, you're fantastic. You’re magnificent. A WINNER! Always the SMARTEST person in the room. Maybe even the WHOLE WORLD! Everybody knows it, Sam! THEY ALL KNOW IT!"

I frowned. "How do you know my name? Do we know each other?"

He squared his massive shoulders with boundless confidence, puffing out his swollen chest beneath his ill-fitting suit, and glared at the walls of my living room as if they were under siege by imaginary conspiracies.

"They’re totally JEALOUS of you, Sam. And let me tell you, it’s pathetic, just so PATHETIC!" he barked, sounding like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum. "Your colleagues are very sad little people. Total FAILURES! Their skills don't even come close to yours. Not even close! And that woman in the metro was absolute TRASH. A loser who'd give anything for what you've got! And Wally? Wally's the worst. An ungrateful little parasite. Desperately showing off to get your attention. DESPERATE, really. Without an audience, he's a nobody. A complete nobody! They hate you because you’re the best, and they’re NOTHING!"

The orange tyrant spat out his peremptory verdicts while flooding me with an uninterrupted stream of megalomaniacal hyperboles and grandiloquent superlatives. I could hardly believe what I was hearing.

"Do you really think all of that, sir?" I murmured, finding myself inexplicably drawn toward him.

He smirked, mechanically readjusting his yellow tie with supreme self-satisfaction, and pinned me with a gaze of such abyssal smugness that the air in the room seemed to congeal. Then he leaned forward, his fat belly spilling over his trousers and his face glowing with delusional triumphalism. He jabbed a thick finger into my chest, right over my heart.

"We're going to build a wall around this heart. It's going to be MASSIVE. The strongest wall you've ever seen. A beautiful, IMPENETRABLE wall," he declared with the crushing certainty of a man who never doubts anything. "Nobody gets through. Nobody hurts you. NOBODY."

And right at that moment, something shifted inside me.

As I stood there listening to this grotesque demagogue defending me with such shameless bad faith that truth itself seemed beside the point, the gaping hole in my heart began to close up. The constant humiliations from my colleagues, the petty insults of daily life, the long agony of the breakup, all of it hurt just a little bit less. A spark of fierce and defiant warmth had just ignited deep in my gut.

I looked at my unlikely champion standing before me, radiating that grandiose and thunderous pride, and despite the absurdity of the situation, I smiled. It felt damn good to be protected by someone so unwaveringly on my side, even if he was completely unhinged.

That was how I first met my ego. And ever since, it hasn't stopped growing.