This was such a good read. I love how they expressed that specific feeling of self loathing where you struggle to move forward even though you have privileges others don't have and feeling the guilt of wasting those privileges. A big circle of guilt and self hate where you think you're not good enough but the things around you are.
Then there's the sayings where its cowardly to run away like that or that you're doing just fine even though you know you're not which just adds on to the cycle.
I didn't really understand what the winner was telling our mc about but from my interpretation it's about mixing the feeling of "am I doing good" with "how good am I doing" so that you can lie to yourself that you're relatively ok.
Reminds me of a vocaloid song called self inflicted achromatic, the topic of it is a lil similar to this. It's a really nice listen.