hating yourself, just a little less

Okay, it is big, isn’t it? Hating yourself, I mean. Because it’s often real. It’s often fake. You wake up, hating yourself. Go to bed, hating yourself. But for moments you will never consider again throughout the day, you won’t hate yourself. For the fleetingest of fleetings you will barely consider yourself. And is that worse? Suspending your own self-awareness just to stop hating yourself? Most probably. But maybe. Maybe there are moments, minutes, perhaps even hours when you do consider yourself. Adequate, loving, thoughtful, talented, content. Perhaps.

         I started a new job this week. Good job. Good people. But it’s a new job, with new people. And despite TikTok doing everything in its power to get me to buy The Courage to be Disliked, I am yet to find it. And so, I have to find the courage to like some things about myself I like for two lengthy hospitality shifts. Because surely if I like myself for these things someone else might. And over my exciting twenty hours learning my new job I find that some of my new colleagues do appear to like some of the things about me that I like. What they don’t like isn’t as easy to recognise. It rarely is. But that’s okay. My Mother always says you’re not working to make friends. But. But. But. Surely I am.

         I’m writing to hate myself a little less as well. I fear that’s why so many of us do. I’m writing to make the hating ever so slightly worth it. So maybe some hating is useful.

         Spoilers: It’s not!

         Never has.

         Never will be.

         As we await the return of the other half of our university sextet, me and the couple I live with shout and squeal silly things at each other every evening. Over junk food and clouds of smoke. I laugh at their pointless arguments, how they have so soon learnt how to wind each other up perfectly. Two or three words in between puffing and mastication. A smile and a wink. A creak of a chair or scraping of a fork. This time last year I did not know them, nor did they know each other. One of the great cosmic mysteries, if you will. In a maliceless way though, I happen to glance the self-hatred in each faux-argument. And how they use this to love each other. How they know how to prod and piss-take just enough about these things. That they can bring these uncomfortable things to the fore. Rip them to shreds about it. Just to love them.

         I wonder if they know they’re doing it.

         I wonder if I’m right.