There's so much guilt there attached to having a perfectly good life.

I can learn to live with guilt. I don't care about being good.

It is madness. And if you don't know who you are, or if your real self has drifted away from you with the undertow, madness at least gives you an identity. It's the same with self-loathing. You're probably just normal and normal-looking but that's not a real identity, not the way ugliness is. Normality, just accepting that you're probably normal-looking, lacks the force field of self-disgust. If you don't know who you are, madness gives you something to believe in.

But I saw the pain and sadness in everything, and swirled it round my mouth like a fine wine.

People don't know. We don't know ourselves so we tell ourselves what we really know is other people. We could say the depth of pain we feel for the lovers who've left us is because we knew them so well.

In other words, it was a struggle with himself. And the product of that struggle: anger, bitterness, resentment, envy or transformation, aspiration, hope, decency..the product of that struggle is the quality of your life and the nature of your soul.