you hate yourself because you're a narcissist

at what point do we realise we all think about ourselves too much?

there’s a fine line etched into the sand of our selfhood that we’re all unwilling to acknowledge. a boundary standing between our perception of ourselves and the crumbling reality of what we are.

such seems often the case when contending with our own self hatred. we like to imagine this hatred, this disgust with our own selves, as a symbol of our humility. a shining beacon telling the world ‘look at me, i am broken and shy and nothing like you self centred fools.’

we think ourselves different. unique and damaged in a way no one else would ever understand - no one has ever experience quite as uniquely as we have. what we don’t realise, what we fail to see in doing so, is that one day we’ll wake up and gaze out at the horizon, bodies aged and frail, and realise that we wasted our lives thinking about ourselves.

we like to imagine this hatred of the self being wholly separate and opposite to the narcissism of those flaunting their self love in our faces. that is has zero relation or similarities to the self indulgent influencers that we hate only because we hate ourselves.

we label ourselves the modest damage, and them the swollen pride, refusing to look closely at the blurring of that jagged line. the moulding of the two into one singular warped reflection of us.

its difficult, i’ll admit, to swallow this truth. to realise that at the end of it all you hated yourself into the same pit they loved themselves into. that this relentless obsession with your failings is just as much an all consuming fixation. a self-worship. a flipped side of the same coin that bruises our ego, rather than inflating it.

you must understand though, in the safety of this prison cell of our concoctions, that you are not as important as you think you are. and i don’t mean that to say that you are not important but rather, that you are not so monumental a being in this world that your failings are worthy of hatred.

you are not so significant to the turning of the earth, to the function of this planet, that your weight, or your voice, or whatever else you punish yourself for, is something requiring criticism. or worse yet, requiring reparation.

we have no control over our insecurities, I understand that. our perception of the self is the consequence of a world that has taught us we’ll never be a perfect commodity. but we do have control over how much we let them control our lives.

and you know this.

i know that you know this, because you’ve said this to your friends. you’ve told them that no one cares that their smile is asymmetrical. that it doesn’t matter that their voice is a touch too nasal, or their lips not bratz doll full, because anyone that has an issue with that clearly has an issue with themselves.

you’ve told your friend that their body is perfect, and beautiful, and created to sustain them anyway so how can it be imperfect?

you know these things, and yet…

and yet you won’t apply the same rules to yourself. you punish your friend for daring to insult themselves and then spend the rest of the day so engrossed in your own self hatred you’re incapable of acknowledging that you’re doing the same.

to think yourself worthy of punishment for being imperfect, is to think the world so reliant on you that it must receive justice for your failure to be so.

you do not need to cut your self open, to break bones and stuff the body and carve flesh away to fit into the ridiculous notions of perfection. put the ‘love yourself’ propaganda to the side for a moment and this still has bearing. the world will survive if you are not the very embodiment of perfection. you are not the pillar upon which society relies for functioning.

it is incomprehensible that you think yourself so imperfect that you must mutilate yourself to improve.

and how is that fair? how is that right?

how can it be true, that this word which creates no leaf the same, and no river tame, and no summer without rain, would expect perfection from you? you, whose fingerprint is a mess of lines, whose teeth grow at different times.

the hardest thing i’ve ever had to do is sit with my reflection and tell it i no longer want to hate it. that i no longer wish to think about myself more often than i do the things i love. that i intend to grant it the same empathy i give this wonderful imperfect world.

i write this not to criticise, or to look down upon, or even to shame you, i hope only to wake you up as i was woken up. to show you that in the grand beauty of life, our imperfections are far more fitted to the world than any false perception of perfection ever could be. that it is better to know you are not perfect and not care, than to strive for a goal you’ll never achieve and be miserable in the wake of failure.

our bodies are filled with an empathy waiting desperately to break free, and it is our duty to let it out, first and foremost for our own sakes. there is so much of life that we’ll never enjoy, if every experience is tainted with our consistent self scrutiny.