A question for you, my dear Mortals:

When you gaze into a mirror, what do you see?

Do you see a strong, confident, and beautiful individual?

Or do you see a pathetic, meek, and unattractive monster?

It is a powerful tour of introspection, but an incredibly important thing to think about. How we see ourselves has major consequences on every facet of our lives.

I don’t love myself, I never really have. I like myself, and I like certain aspects of my own personality, but it’s really no secret to those that know me well that I really don’t “love” myself. I have never seen my own value, or even my own inner beauty.

So what started this inferiority complex?

The truth is, I really don’t know how it began.

I’ve always been shy and introverted. I never had a great social life, and the few friends I did have were always more extroverted than myself. My best friend growing up was “intellectually gifted” according to the school system, and he always went to the “gifted” classes or “gifted” schools and hung around his “gifted” friends (which is totally acceptable, don’t get me wrong). I eventually lost contact with him, and we never really reconnected. And in high school, one of my best friends (and on/off love interest) possessed a very dominant nature. She was well meaning and a good person at her core, but in the end our relationship became sort of toxic to both of us (and we both sort of knew it). I walked out of high school with more emotional blemishes than I had going in, which likely added to my inferiority complex.

Regardless of how (or where) it began, there are a number of factors that aid in my feelings of inferiority, such as my depression issues (thanks Greta), or my love-life woes, or just my general lack of a path in life. I am a mess, so it is extremely easy for me to not see anything more in my reflection than some pathetic excuse of a man that totally doesn’t have any of his life together.

 

“If he could learn to love another, and earn her love in return, by the time the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken. If not, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time. As the years passed, he fell into despair, and lost all hope. For who could ever learn to love a beast?”

“Beauty and the Beast”, Walt Disney Pictures, 1991

 

So in closing, my lovely Mortals, I want to ask that every one of you look inwards and try to see the beauty instead of the beast. It is harder than it sounds, believe me I know, but in the end you will be more empowered because of it.

This is the denizen under the bridge, signing off.