(1/2) Self-Pity: The Last Source of Love
Living, feeling, and thinking vicariously through false, conjured-up scenarios
CHAPTER ONE
“It sounds stupid…” he finally responded, after a minute and twenty-eight seconds of hesitation. Jeremy, a standoffishly defiant 20-something-year-old, previously diagnosed with NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder), lay on the chaise longue — the classical Freudian “therapist couch”. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his black curls slowly disappear into its $496 of deep red-wine leather.
J: “Sometimes I think about things.”
T: “Really?”
J: “Not like that, I mean…like, situations that aren’t real.”
Jeremy went on to explain his new defense mechanism when faced with loneliness, depression, anger, boredom, or the like. That is, the fabrication of an imaginary scenario where he paints himself to be the victim of his own emphatic tragedy.
T: “You retreat — avoid the real-life situation first and foremost.”
J: “I mean, I can’t really conjure up the fake situations without doing that first, so yeah.”
T: “And you say you do this subconsciously?”
“It’s automatic now,” His presence insisted on not being seen. Jeremy covered his quivering lip by pressing them together, forming an overstuffed sandbag with a miniature slit as his unsteady nose breathing whisted with hostility.
J: “It just happens, and then I get sucked into that world for hours, sometimes days. Then it’s like.. being in the world out here gets underwhelming and even more unbearable.”
T: “It’s hard to face reality sometimes.”
“Not sometimes, all the fuckin time,” Jeremy’s eyes defeatedly knelt to the floor, as his now melted stature subserviently followed. After all, his darkest secrets had been exposed to the light of reality. He vented about his parents and society, and how nothing was how he would have wanted it to be. His words spilled out like sand from his miniature slit of a mouth that was trying to confess everything — spilling out every last grain of sand before the death of his self-image consumed him.
I leaned in slowly. The deliberate, forward movement in my leather chair sounded like a professional mic was set up for ASMR movie effects. “What do these fake situations give you?”
He paused. I nearly heard him swallow an impending lump in the back of his throat as his heart, a now dense cube, thud to the floor; joining his eyes and liquid stature. I knew he knew the answer to my question, and I was nearly certain that he also knew that I knew he knew. But Jeremy sat there for the remaining few minutes without a sound, attempting to make no noise or movement until his broken whistle of a nose snuffled, finally breaking the silence.
At that, he stood up, and left the room.
During his next session the following week, Jeremy’s demeanor was different. He spoke more freely about his emotions and even voiced in explicit detail some of his “fake situations”:
J: “I’ll give you an example. I got rejected by this one girl I been tryna rizz lately. We hang out with the same friend group and I’m pretty sure some of them know. So. It's kinda awkward being in the same space, you know?”
T: “Hm.”
J: “So then I stop hanging out with them…”
T: “And what does that social gap make room for?”
J: “Like…. Sadness?”
T: “Sadness?”
J: “Yeah. It makes room for sadness. But only part of it is sadness.”
T: “What does the rest look like?”
J: “I think it’s also sadness actually, but sadness towards me… cuz I aint got no riz, lol”
T: “Lol..Can you speak from that sadness that seems to be directed towards self?”
J: “It starts out as a genuine sadness, then it's like I pour gasoline on it, and it becomes even more sadness not just about the situation…. But… almost like… pity?”
T: “Hmmmmm.”
J: “I start to pity myself. And from there that’s when the fake situations start happening….. I think about myself in the friend group that knows about my rejection, and them giving me crap”
T: “Which actually happened?”
J: “Not really. I mean some of them ignored me but no one really did anything outwardly hurtful. I’m the one who made that up.”
T: “Gasoline on the fire.”
J: “Yeah. Exactly. I think about them mocking me, and then someone coming to save me… someone who I don’t know, who isn’t real. A girl that doesn’t exist. Like a random stranger taking my hand and pulling me away from all of that, and then scolding everyone for hurting me. And before she leaves, she glares at the girl who rejected me.”
T: “Jeremy, what does all this give you?”
CHAPTER TWO:
Sadie
Sadie, previously diagnosed with AVPD (Avoidant Personality Disorder), and dubbed a “lifeless teenager” by her father, sat hunched over on the chaise longue, concerningly still. Her eyes looked like they were having a conversation with the wooden floor, so intense that her eyelashes dared not interrupt, so neither did I.
S: “Are you gonna say anything?” She asked, still maintaining eye contact with the floor.
T: “I could ask you the same, but it looks like you’re deep in thought.”
S: “Yeah.. I’m not good at talking if you couldn’t already tell.”
T: “Maybe. But you’re good at thinking it seems.”
S: “Yeah.”
T: “Yeah.”
She resumed her dialogue with the floor, and I resumed observing. Sadie dressed in men’s clothing; baggy cargo pants and a plain beige button-down. Her black Docs completed the “Korean Sundays” preset she may or may not have been going for. Either way, it appeared that she did care about color theory and dressing accordingly — in an effortless, nonchalant kind of way.
A deep reluctant sigh broke the silence again, “I feel like I’m waiting for something.”
I chose not to respond.
S: “Waiting for something to happen.”
T: “So that?”
S: “So that I can feel something.”
I chose not to respond again.
S: “It's empty right now.”
T: “What fills it up?”
S: “me.” she said under her breath in lowercase.
T: “How?”
Another reluctant sigh. “It's like my emotions are waiting to blame someone. They need someone to initiate their visceral existences — like a target or something. But, they’re on standby now.”
T: “How do others initiate their visceral existences?”
S: “By doing something that moves me…. That I don’t like.”
I chose not to respond again.
“Then my emotions devour whoever the prey is, and that gets the cogs turning, which is when I become alive. . .and purposeful.”
“The movement of your emotions is dependent upon the movement of others.” I offered in summary.
Sadie stopped, she sucked in her cheeks and shoved her eyebrows together — now glaring at the floor as if silently scolding it for giving her the idea to talk to me. A deep exhale followed.
I waited.
She waited.
The poor floor waited.
“It’s the only thing I know how to do. It’s all I’ve ever done for as long as I can remember.” Sadie subtly bit her lip as her affect turned to anger. “I do it all the time actually, in nearly every instance, when I’m wronged, when I’m right, when I’m cared for, when I’m neglected. I live there, I am that.”
T: “Sadie, what does all this give you?”
A long pause paved the way for tears to flow through, tears made up of an amalgamation of loss, defeat, shame, embarrassment, and longing. And after a deep inhale both Jeremy and Sadie replied: “I feel like those are some of the only times when I can actually cry. I feel like… those are the only times when I can actually feel love.”
