Once upon a time, someone whose opinion I valued highly told me "You'll be a very nice person, if you ever stop being so self-centred." She was right, on all counts; as an adolescent I, like many people my age, did tend to think about myself to excess - not in a positive light, necessarily, and indeed often negatively but there was this constant stream of thinking about myself. And it needed to stop. This is part of growing up.
However, to a self-loathing eighteen-year-old, this hurt like a...well, you know. That sting still lingers. For a long time, I think it made me even more self-centred because I spent so much time worrying about being self-centred. Yeah. Logical. I know.
In this, as in many things, my girlfriend had some words of wisdom. She didn't intend them to be about me, but rather about herself.
"Yeah, I'm self-centred. I'm not selfish. I just sort of worry about my own problems, because I know about them, because I'm there, but that doesn't mean I don't care about anyone else's or think I'm better than them."
Halfway through college, at the time, I staaaaared at the computer screen for a minute, while something inside me clicked. Okay, said the click. Okay, so maybe we're self-centred, but that doesn't mean we're a bad person. This just means we have to focus on being more aware of others.
And then, on down the line, moving to Oregon happened, meaning that living with my biological mum happened, and she, having a severe intolerance for crap, got really tired really fast of me apologizing for things that weren't even REMOTELY my fault and refusing to take care of myself because doing so might require asking something of someone.
"It isn't about you! Sometimes, people are grumpy because they've had a bad day, or tired because they slept badly. Furthermore, not taking care of yourself means you worry people who care about you, which is a hell of a lot more of an inconvenience than asking them for a ride to the pharmacy to pick up your meds. Would you mind if your friends asked that of you?"
No!, I answered, indignantly, of course I wouldn't! I'm kind of a worthless piece of crap but I'm not that much of a je-
Oh. Ohhhh. That was about when the double-standard hit me; the realization that my self-loathing had come right back round the other way to a reverse sort of narcissism. I was still holding myself apart - claiming myself as unique and special as any inveterate narcissist.
Oh.
And that sort of "I'm a worthless piece of crap" thing? Yeah. That came across really adolescent. Just as suicide is murder turned inward, that sort of flagrant self-flagellation is the equivalent of deliberately picking fights with people you don't like, rather than politely avoiding them and, if the problem persists, notifying a third party to help work on the issue. It's a grab for attention.
Frequently, people stop there, throwing their hands in the air in exasperation. These chuckleheads and their demands for attention!
The thing is, wanting attention is natural. You have to create yourself, define yourself, save yourself, but doing so in a vacuum is painful and, if not impossible, at least dauntingly difficult. For even the most introverted person, it's lonely. There's nothing wrong with the desire for attention.
Nor is there any inherent harm in feeling sorry for yourself, or angry with yourself. You're you. You're there. You know all the stupid freaking things you do. You know all the stupid freaking things the world does to you. There's nothing wrong with this awareness. Psychological pain, like physical pain, is a sign that something's wrong - even if that something is that pain persists past any direct outside reason for it to do so. Pain's there, and it hurts.
Where the wrong comes in, of attention-seeking or pity party-throwing, is in asking others to fix you. Please, please, if you need help, ask for it - if you need a friend to listen, a shoulder to cry on, someone to kick your ass into believing in yourself, whatever it is. If you just need someone to talk about goofy stuff with, or hang out with, or whatever, go for it. If you need sympathy or time to yourself, that's fine too.
It's not the longing or the feeling that's juvenile. It's handling it in a way that lays the blame, and the solution, for your own problems on other people's doorsteps, because there's a vast difference between helping someone help themselves and the eternally vain attempt to fix them.
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