SELF – HATRED

Once I was at a party where I met a gang who were talking about a cool game. I joined the banter. I wanted to be cool too. I assumed what I wanted to say and stopped pinning my ears back to the discussion. Instead of enjoying the party, I was wondering about how best to show off.

   Finally, I blabbered something dumb about another game. I said something they forgot in a second. No one paid any attention to me. No one cared about me. I felt wretched, like I didn’t belong at this party, in this city, or on this planet. I wanted to be casual as everyone else around me and did try hard to do this. But I failed.

  Why is it that some people just do nothing and everyone likes them? This is not fair. People who depend on other’s thoughts may also hate themselves or consider they are not talented at anything. This is called imposter syndrome and people suffering from it are low self-esteem people.

  Low self-esteem causes many problems. People with low self-esteem fail even before they start to do something.  And if they do get success in something, they feel they were just lucky.  For example, you wrote a blog that you are sure is terrible. But people liked it. Do you think maybe you’ve managed to write somewhat well? Nah. It’s maybe that they didn’t see how terrible it is, you reason, wandering off this thought.

  Low self-esteem forces us to produce projective contrivances that help us not get hurt mentally. Some people may talk too much or nothing as they don’t want to seem stupid. Other people may avoid popular people as they are not confident enough to speak grandly. Some people never enter into any arguments as they know they will lose. Some people avoid taking new things or opportunities as they know they will fail. All these things force them to create a protective mechanism and hate themselves (self-hatred).

This advances the query of where this self-hate comes from. Let me answer this with a few examples. A girl who grew up in a large joint family was the oldest of all the four sisters. Her parents demanded that she should take care of her siblings. From age six, she was into this work. She felt happy when her parents praised her and was very depressed when they scolded her. She just took care of others and never really considered what she desired. So her self-esteem became only to helping others and taking up their comments personally. Many people take a lot of advantage from these kinds of people. 

  Another guy once lost a fight when he was a kid. Everybody around laughed at him. And so with this incident, he started to bully the weaker ones when he grew older. This way he felt confident and developed bad self-esteem.

  If you’ve discovered the reasons for your low self-esteem, what should you do next? How can you stop it? The solution is difficult, but easy if you look into the eyes of your fear. It doesn’t matter if people don’t like you. Disasters won’t erupt if a bully loses. Nobody dies if people learn to decline to help if she or he doesn’t want to. Letdowns should be reflected as a way to become better. 

Pay attention to not your bad side but the good one. Stop depending on others’ thoughts and over time, you will appreciate yourself. You will begin to notice who really you are! 

Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of my imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or persons is entirely coincidental. || Contents of this story should not be reproduced in any manner without permission.