How To Fall Out Of Love With Yourself (Without Even Realizing It)
By Kim Quindlen
Give yourself no second chances, even though you give plenty of them to others. Take every mistake you’ve made and relive it in your head over and over, rather than allowing yourself to forgive it, learn from it, and move on. Get used to the shame. Accept that it should probably just be part of your life.
Be unconscious, in everything that you do.
Look at your days with a mindset of How can I pass the time? rather than What will make me feel alive today? Observe each moment of pure joy and happiness with a worry over when it’s going to end, rather than allowing yourself to just live in it and bask in it for as long as you can. Believe that you don’t deserve this happiness. That there must always be a catch to it.
Scroll on your phone every time you have a spare moment of quiet to yourself. Look at everything for an instant and then keep moving on. Walk away from it retaining absolutely nothing.
Date people who treat you poorly, promising yourself that you can make them change or that maybe this is just the best you can do.
Date people who make you feel less than, who make you feel insecure, who make you feel like you’re the reason they treat you the way that they do. Accept this for yourself. Accept that this is what you must deserve.
Swallow your pain and your loneliness and your anxieties anytime they come up. Don’t call the people who care about you, who would drop anything to help you. You’re probably just bothering them. You’re probably just being dramatic.
Never try for more. Stay in the job you hate because it’s too late to try anything else. Don’t bother reading or learning or working to expand your mind in any way. You’re in your twenties now, it’s too late to change anything. Your brain is the way it is, it’s stuck like this for the rest of your life.
Be hard on your body. Never give it enough sleep. Drink too much. Eat things that make you feel lethargic and nauseous and uncomfortably full. Punish yourself anytime you eat something fattening or high in calories, even if it’s just sporadically, and tell yourself that this is why you don’t look like that beautiful, thin person standing next to you. Say these things out loud to the people around you. “I really shouldn’t be eating this” or “I guess I’ll just get used to looking like this!” because you believe you owe them the opportunity to feel superior to you.
Accept a life of mediocrity and don’t try to change it.
Dream careers and exciting travel and supportive partners and loyal friends were made for other people, not you. Just sit there, and feel nothing. Not triumph nor failure. Just be neutral, just take this as your fate.
And then fall out of love with yourself for good.