echo chambers
But it’s nice to play pretend
I wish that I could lie
But I’m way too self-aware—Temper City, Self Aware
At 1:32 in the morning, these lyrics hit too hard for me. 16 years old, fresh out of ninth grade, angsty teen larping alt rock—call me what you will, I’m tired and officially burnt out. And it’s not for the reasons you think—sure, academics and peer pressure might’ve played a big part, but I think the real reason is none other than myself.
Do you have what people call an inner critic? The voice that’s always nagging at you inside your head, chipping away everything you have bit by bit until you virtually go insane. (Iykyk)
Get Corie’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
I hope it’s a universal experience, because I sure do, and boy it’s one of the worst possible things that can happen to you. Imagine everyone else supporting you and affirming your decisions, only to still hate yourself because you’re just way too self-aware. And then you hate yourself for acknowledging your self hatred, because it feels like you’re just being an attention-seeker for trying to get help. I still don’t know what to call this phenomenon, but in my head I just name it the self-feeding echo chamber. I’m sure the psychology experts have a term for this too. Maybe it’s dysphoria. Or maybe it’s just mentally incompetent.
Every day I look in the mirror, it’s just criticism after criticism flooding my brain—my lopsided waist reminds me of my scoliosis, something I couldn’t (or didn’t) control and still live with every day as a consequence of my inaction. Sometimes my dysmorphia makes me forcefully shove my body in a certain way, trying my best to convince myself that I’m not ugly and out of shape. I feel the difference of the sensation of my feet touching the ground and remember my legs are probably uneven too. So are my hips. And then I realize my whole body’s royally screwed up, because don’t even get me started on my face—that’s a whole nother shitshow. What use is slathering layers upon layers of makeup on my face when I know as soon as I go out I’ll be humbled by a natural ten? Life ain’t fair.
Oftentimes I wonder why I act so harsh on myself, and the answer is simple. I put myself on such a high pedestal built with poorly stacked Jenga blocks of expectation that once that feeling’s gone, I crash down to the lowest of lows into the bottomless pit of self-deprecation. And then I question my own audacity to even have such high expectations of myself in the first place, when clearly I’m not even capable of doing the simplest act of loving myself as I am. As much as I hate to admit it, in that regard a stuck-up narcissist is better than me—at least they know to enjoy themselves, something I would give anything for. See, I’m just proving their point.
This is probably a good time to give the reader a short break, maybe even suggest some life-changing solution to all these problems perhaps. Unfortunately if I had such a thing I wouldn’t even be prefacing it with all this nonsense, because why not just cut to the chase? No, this is simply a rant; a regurgitation of my messy feelings to the Internet because I randomly feel like it. In fact I’ll probably come to regret it the next morning when that post-sleep clarity hits, but it’ll be too late by then.
If anyone got this far they might be wondering if I’m trying to seek help or therapy. Those things aren’t available to me at the moment, and honestly I don’t even need all that—I’m just trying to get by, not draw pitying attention to myself from medical professionals who “know how it feels like”. I know too. I’m okay and I’m trying. Though I guess it’s better than turning to social media for comfort, because trust me, it isn’t worth your time. I’ve been down the rabbit hole of teary eyed doomscrolling staring at an oversaturated feed full of people barking at you to lock in and start looksmaxxing. Dude, I’m no doctor, but I’m pretty sure you can’t exactly change your bone structure by doing jaw exercises every day. I learned the hard way that my chubby face will stay chubby no matter what.
I hope this gets 0 views (why not just keep this private then idiot?) because I’m sure this will come back to haunt me every now and then. Writing stuff at night is just so dangerous because you never know when it’ll take an emo turn all of a sudden and make you look cringe and depressed. I just hope there’s someone out there who can relate or possibly even understand — if I’m not asking too much of the world that is.
Corie x
