Life

What’s it like to be a Narcissist

Being a narcissist isn’t what most people think it is. It’s not walking around thinking you’re better than everyone else all the time. It’s not constant confidence or arrogance or being some cartoon villain manipulating everyone around you while you twirl a mustache. It’s a lot more pathetic than that, honestly. It’s about power—but specifically, needing power to feel okay. To feel safe.

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Let’s start with the word itself: “salaryman.” It sounds like a comic book character, a kind of Clark Kent in pleated slacks, whose only superpower is a quiet willingness to disappear. The term, borrowed awkwardly from English and filtered back through Japanese, denotes what’s more formally called a “full-time company employee” (正社員). That doesn’t quite capture it, though. What we’re really talking about is a role, a performance, a life on rails. Roughly a third of Japan’s workforce wears this suit, but its shadow is cast far wider than the number implies.

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What’s It Like to Have OCD

Living with OCD is like being in an abusive relationship with your own mind. Except there’s no leaving. No breakup. No safe house. Just me, myself, and this glitchy wiring that turns everyday life into a minefield of rituals, thoughts, and panic.

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There’s this moment I keep coming back to. I’m on a crowded city bus, wedged into one of those pairs of molded plastic seats next to a girl reading a paperback. Our thighs touch—not in a flirtatious way, just that accidental, human kind of contact that happens in cities. And I don’t say a word. I barely breathe. I’m too busy memorizing the way her breath fogs the window, pretending we’re something we’re not. It’s pathetic. It’s nothing. But it’s also the most intimate physical experience I’ve had in years.

[Read more…] about What It Feels Like to Be Forever Alone

You don’t walk into a relationship with someone who has Borderline Personality Disorder knowing that’s what it is. You just think they feel more. You think they’re intense, emotional, alive in ways you aren’t. You mistake it for depth. You mistake it for honesty. But it’s not honesty. It’s panic disguised as love.

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When I was a little kid, and I asked my parents a non-obvious question about the human body or biology, their answer would be “Ask your uncle Paulo next time we see him. He’s a doctor”. Other questions about various topics would get “Let’s call up grandma and ask her; She’s a teacher”, or “Let’s see if the encyclopedia has anything about this”, or “Ask your teacher if, during recess, you can go ask the librarian at school”.

What movies are playing? Let’s check the newspaper.

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When people hear I’m in a relationship with a man who’s incarcerated, the reactions fall somewhere between disbelief and pity. Sometimes curiosity. Sometimes judgment pretending to be curiosity.

“Why would you date someone in prison?”

“Don’t you want more for yourself?”

“I could never do that.”

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