Inspired by the Schmidt Sting Pain Index:

(edit: Backstory.)

I Bring you The Gibson Scale of Existential Angst:

1.0 Only ketchup in the fridge: hungry, impoverished, mildly amusing -- you flatter yourself with thoughts of bohemianism as you rummage for crackers.

1.8 Lying about finishing Being and Nothingness: shameful, yet cocky -- you gathered the general meaning from the first quarter of the book, anyways, and you read "Existentialism is a Humanism" twice for your intro to Philosophy class in first year. Nevertheless, you blush scarlet when the girl you brought home lingers over the "S" section of your bookshelf.

2.2 Your childhood best friend takes you to an awkward party: nostalgic, alienating -- you oscillate wildly between wishing someone would talk to you and feeling you're much smarter than the lot of them. You get too drunk too early and wonder how deeply your feelings of superiority are rooted in profound social awkwardness. You spill your drink on a girl with a navel piercing and spend the better part of the evening vomiting surreptitiously in the back yard.

3.0 Finishing your BA: tedious, humiliating, meaningless -- any sense of accomplishment is overwhelmingly deflated; people you spent the last four years scorning get all the awards for academic excellence, your mother wears a peach sweater set to the ceremony and tells your favourite professor that she's "heard all about" them. You wonder if you will be able to complete your two-month-late final papers before the grade deadline. You'll show them all what you're made of at grad school. If you get in.

3.6 The unattractive Women's Studies major you were dating out of convenience leaves you: confusing, ego crushing -- sexual frustration and anger wash over you in waves; you send her a regrettable drunken text message reading "Judith Butler is a cunt." You wonder if it was the disparaging remarks about Simone de Beauvoir, or because you cried after intercourse that time, or whether it has something to do with that fucking smooth talking professor with his fucking blazers with jeans and his fucking goddamn beard.

4.0 Chlamydia: uncomfortable, burning -- you are disgusted by the banality of the human body and long to free your intellect from its fleshy prison. You re-read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and identify so strongly with Dedalus that you cry during the "Hellfire" sermon. You bus to a walk-in clinic an hour out of town to ensure you don't run into any colleagues on the way. A girl from your high school is working reception and you almost faint.

4+ Grad school: anxious, exhausting -- you are so overwhelmed by the meaninglessness of life that you decide to go get drunk alone and ponder the great questions of life. At the bar, you choke on your first whiskey and feel queasy after your second. Bored, agitated, and penniless, you slink home at 9:30, unenthusiastically masturbate, then call your mother. When she asks how your classes are going, you burst into tears.