How to properly scare yourself

Feb 03, 2017

Feeling the full brunt of a condition is a hard but necessary exercise.

Since starting this blog I’ve decided to no longer deny my condition and pretend to be someone else. Rather than thinking I’m this great guy who went to a military school for high school and learned positive values along the way, it seems I’m still the puny weakling from my dreadful childhood years. It’s like I never grew up, but remain the same stunted person despite being in my mid-forties. Sad.

This fact alters my worldview considerably, but at its core is the question of who am I. I don’t really know my identity. I’m not supposed to be anyone (which is a relief), but in social situations there’s no longer a persona to identify with. Every time one tries to pop into my mind I fight it away.

Philosophy triumphs easily over past and future evils; but present evils triumph over it. - François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxim 22

Today I decided to go out with some terrible pants and shoes. There’s a set of grey jeans I absolutely hate because the fabric around the lower legs seem all droopy and melts a little around the shoe. I don’t understand if it’s because these are old jeans or they’re made that way, but I hate to see myself in the mirror with them. Then I wore a mismatched pair of shoes (mismatched with the jeans that is). I’ve seen people staring at those jeans on previous occasions and wondered what got the attention till I looked at them in the mirror.

Let me explain something. Since middle school I’ve been preoccupied by my appearance to the extent that I can spend too much time in the mirror looking at myself at different angles to guage whether I look funny or not. Somehow my mind fears ridicule from others, with accompanying ostracism if I look weird or misshapen. At university I used to believe my head was large in proportion to my body size, and believed I was misshapen and funny looking. No one ever told me this; I just believed it. After disclosing this belief to my father, he adamantly denied I had a misproportional head and offered to measure it with calipers.

I’ve long ago ditched that belief (or any similar one) but am still obsessesed with my wardrobe. If I go to work in the morning wearing clothes that don’t fit my own innate sense of style and don’t look perfect, I feel like shit the whole day. It’s very important for me to look good in social situations, even (and especially) when going out in the street.

Clothes make the man

The worst is, I never believe I look good in social situations. No matter how much I check myself in the mirror, no matter how much people tell me I look good, I will never believe I look normal or “good.” I am always on the lookout for people’s expressions, whether they’re looking at me or ignoring me. People’s faces and expressions betray subtle signs about me (or so I believe). From there I can tell if I’m somehow accepted or not, but more importantly, whether I’m a worthy person (or not). People’s actions, words, glances, and expressions make me or break me. Situations where I stand the chance of rejection, or where the others are in a higher social level than me, are unbearable.

At any rate, I left our apartment and walked down the street in my crappy jeans. In one way, as I’m now older, more mature, more experienced, I would be able to bear people’s glances down at my lower jeans. In another way, I’m absolutely terrried by it and am always, totally unprepared for it. Words even fail me to describe my terror.

I stood next to the bus stop in a conspicuous place. Next to me was a group of teenage boys and I spotted one of them with his eyes fixated towards the ground right in the direction of my lower legs. He stared at it, not taking his eyes away. I noticed his glance and quickly looked away, then looked back. He was still staring. Terror started to well up in me but as I bore the attention, the fear turned into a kind of muffled anxiety. It was hard to do it, but I straightened my back and tried to stand tall. When I looked back, he was talking with his friends. I glanced at him several times but he never once looked back in my direction. It was as if I wasn’t important enough to merit more attention, and I felt relieved by this.

He too was wearing grey jeans, but his looked better and the shoes were better matched. Later, I walked through the thick of downtown, among the crowd, knowing my horrible jeans would attract attention. I looked at different oncoming people and a few looked at my face but no one looked at my lower legs. After a while I forgot my jeans and somehow got used to them. I’m back home now but the thought of going out with them again doesn’t bother me.