That's my feeling as well. Whereas we are brought up as "men" or "members of this abstract ideal 'humanity'," we die as individual animal creatures. The discrepancy between some imagined "literary authorial identity" and this frightened animal-being each of us "is" may reveal why society and its mores are such a farce. We suffer as animals.
Was it Epictetus who suggested we become knowers rather than sufferers? Schopenhauer, in WWv2, by page 225, he explains that our true nature cannot be grounded in a "knower" (and willing a mere result of knowledge).
It must be a cruel twist of Fate that I am subjected to my aging mother's agenda, seeing as she was raised on TV (Hollywood, Consumerist Advertisements) and Catholicism. I never imagined I would have to live as a saint or martyr, especially not in such petty degrees. There are some common denominator dues I have to pay, and they are not of the heroic variety, but the daily and mundane kind. Maybe these daily crucifixions, where I am torn from "my agenda" to pay deference to the "commands of an aging parent," are shaping my character, that of the silent autodidactic slave who who grumbles under his breath constantly.