we should all be narcissists
LJ Idol week 4 prompt: what does narcissism have to do with me?
What's the difference between self-love and narcissism?
That's a serious question actually. When I was a kid, I really liked* Greek myths. In the course of my reading, I came across the story of Narcissus. He was not a particularly awesome dude: he looked down on those who loved him because he thought nobody could measure up to his own self-love. He died (like most hubristic characters in mythology) because he was so bewitched by his own reflection in a pool of water and forgot to eat.**
Basically what I gleaned from the story of Narcissus was that if you love yourself, that's a bad thing. Admittedly, that's an oversimplified understanding of it, but that's what I as an articulate but still young child understood. This was one of those defining moments of my childhood, though not in a positive way. I extrapolated that I should not love myself lest I be seen as stuck-up (something I was very concerned with at the time). This is also probably a large part of what led to my fifteen-year-long eating disorder from which I have not yet fully recovered.
Last year I decided my relationship with myself needed to change. It is hard to keep starving yourself for so long, and it's even harder to live with it. So I joined the Radical Self Love movement. Simply put, this is a lifelong quest to learn to love yourself, both body and spirit. I found out about it through Gala Darling, though the idea itself is far from new. It is, however, revolutionary.
The constant background noise in many women's lives of “I hate my body”, “If only I wasn't so fat”, “I'll be happy when I lose five pounds” - all of this essentially translates to “I hate myself.” This is not healthy. This is not normal. Self-hatred is no longer acceptable to me. Five pounds is vanity weight. So is ten. So is wanting to drop a dress size or two. We need to stop wanting to change ourselves. Instead, we ought to learn how to love ourselves as we are. Our mirrors and our hearts will thank us.
I'm still not totally sure I know where the dividing line is between self-love and narcissism. But, as a twenty-six-and-a-half year old woman who is sick of disliking herself, I am basically learning to say “Fuck it.” Let people think I'm stuck-up. If loving yourself means that you are stuck-up, so be it. Because disliking yourself for so long gets boring after a while.
Love is healthy, hate is not. It's ok to like yourself, if not fall madly deeply in love with yourself.
* By liked, I actually mean believed in the Greek and Roman pantheons. My best friend and I got into a huge argument about God. I said that Zeus was the boss on Mount Olympus and then there were various other deities - I was an articulate six year old - and she swore that Jesus was God. I'd never heard of this Jesus guy, so I was pretty suspicious of him.
** Forgetting to eat seems to a theme in pursuit of beauty.
♥ pacing while praying ♥ you are beautiful ♥ digging for buried crap ♥