LJ Idol Season 8: Week 4
What does narcissism have to do with me?
It's all about me. No, really, it is all about me.
I may not be the worst patient in the world, but I'm certainly up there as a strong contender. Even an innocuous cold is quite enough to have me going around moaning, sighing, and sniffling as if the world were about to end.
So, when it comes to there being something actually wrong - something that no amount of Googling the symptoms can provide a rational yet reassuring answer for - you can bet that the whole world seems to close in to the narrow pinpoint focus of me, my pain, and what might possibly be wrong with me. After all, no-one else can actually feel my pain, can they? So obviously they need to be told in excruciatingly precise and gory detail all of my symptoms, and how much they're making me suffer.
The most anodyne of conversations can be hijacked onto the subject. Told that someone in a nursing home is having difficulty walking, I mutter darkly, "Well, that's only to be expected, isn't it, at the age of 87? Not like me, who's only 37 and yet am also having difficulty walking." Discussions of paintings and ornaments can be diverted onto who might wish to receive what in my will.
And so on, and so forth.
That's me in the corner, that's me in the spotight, losing my narcissism.
ETA: Well, the doctors can't work out what's wrong with me either, but they're definitely worried. So maybe I'm not being so neurotically self-obsessed after all.
It's all about me. No, really, it is all about me.
I may not be the worst patient in the world, but I'm certainly up there as a strong contender. Even an innocuous cold is quite enough to have me going around moaning, sighing, and sniffling as if the world were about to end.
So, when it comes to there being something actually wrong - something that no amount of Googling the symptoms can provide a rational yet reassuring answer for - you can bet that the whole world seems to close in to the narrow pinpoint focus of me, my pain, and what might possibly be wrong with me. After all, no-one else can actually feel my pain, can they? So obviously they need to be told in excruciatingly precise and gory detail all of my symptoms, and how much they're making me suffer.
The most anodyne of conversations can be hijacked onto the subject. Told that someone in a nursing home is having difficulty walking, I mutter darkly, "Well, that's only to be expected, isn't it, at the age of 87? Not like me, who's only 37 and yet am also having difficulty walking." Discussions of paintings and ornaments can be diverted onto who might wish to receive what in my will.
And so on, and so forth.
That's me in the corner, that's me in the spotight, losing my narcissism.
ETA: Well, the doctors can't work out what's wrong with me either, but they're definitely worried. So maybe I'm not being so neurotically self-obsessed after all.