This piece doesn’t refer to one particular person or incident, much less to one, particular bad decision. Instead, it’s an amalgamation of a lot of different things over a lot of different years.

Essentially, it’s a lot of bitter self-recrimination over every bad decision I have ever made, every time that someone has taken advantage of me and/or played me for a fool, and every single time I really just should have known better. So yes, while the self-recrimination is indeed firmly in place, I also realise that I’m far from the only one, who has, or who has experienced similar themes in life, all the way from bad decisions, to being effortlessly manipulated, and reaping the richly-deserved reward of having your trust and goodwill violated by others. Once again: Just how many times have I heard the smugly-asserted Social-Darwinistic notion that: Everyone gets exactly what they deserve in life?*

The Dunning-Kruger Effect being what it is, and depression being what it is, and doing what it does best, I sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that I’m far worse than the average person in a lot of these areas. At the same time, however, I can realise that such viewpoints might be a tad too solipsistic (not to mention simplistic). After all, the world is full of stories, and everyone has their own. Hence, the ‘me’ qualifier might indeed apply to the writer, or at the same time, it might serve to reflect aspects that another reader might see within themselves.

Finally, the ‘Games of Chance’ theme is more figurative than literal, as the bigger framework that this piece inhabits is the oft-stated notion that everything in life is basically one big, or a series of smaller games of chance. Likewise, I have included a few actual pieces of manipulation that have been used (often quite effectively) against myself and/or others I know in the past. But again, live and learn, and some life lessons prove to be quite expensive indeed. Beyond this, I will let the reader get from this, and take from this what they will.









*And again, that ‘Exactly what you deserve’ only ever seems to apply if it’s a negative consequence. For some reason, it never applies if it’s a positive outcome.