Narcissist: Filial Origins

James Bowden

1.
It occurs to me that much of embarrassment is just
          misplaced
importance of the self.

2.
How to counter embarrassment:
          who cares?
How to counter narcissism:
          who cares?

3. I am not sure how it has happened, but
the older I get, the more self-conscious
and anxious I am become.
The less I wish to be perceived
by
          anybody
at all.

So it turns out that many strong emotions have roots
in narcissism. Excitement–prospects for self. Love–
reciprocal, recursive excitement with an other. Fear–love
of the body, this small existence. Anxiety–fear of
wrongly placed judgement. Self-consciousness–anxiety,
and make it introspective. Embarrassment–self-consciousness
at our actions betraying the self we are fighting to construct.
And so on, and so forth. And how impeccably positive
makes space for negative. Defines it, really.

4.
My father scares me. I scare me. In me, his narcissism
manifested as lack of agency, I, forever an extension
of his untrusting arm. Beneath the surface, I see him:
naked and lonely and afraid. Maybe you are like me.
Maybe I am like you. He comes to fear my words,
piercing too deep. What is insecurity, bottled for
62 years? What becomes of our fermentation?
I try to distill myself, but taste only bitter liquor.
I try to find words for us, a bridge, a home,
a door. One must imagine Telemachus
grasping.

5.
I am my father, only modern.

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Draws maybe you are like me bit from Olena Kalytiak Davis’ “may be you are like me: scared and awake”. The title comes from Batman: Arkham Origins. Telemachus fused with that Sisyphus line I’ve been splattering everywhere, at the end.