maybe if they like me, i'll like myself
i don’t remember when it started, this craving for other people’s approval. maybe it was when i realized i wasn’t enough for myself. or maybe it’s always been there, growing in the shadow of every conversation, every glance, every silence. i’ve built myself out of mirrors, all of them angled to reflect what i think someone else wants to see.
it’s exhausting, trying to be liked. not just liked—wanted. admired. needed. i shift and adjust, recalibrating with every interaction, trying to anticipate what version of me will stick. i watch their eyes, their smiles, their pauses, looking for signs that i’ve done it right. that i’ve made myself into something worth liking.
sometimes i think it’s working. a compliment here, a laugh there. but it never lasts. their approval is slippery, impossible to hold onto. and when it fades, i’m left staring at the hollow space where their validation used to sit, wondering what i did wrong.
i hate how much it matters to me. how much i need their gaze to feel real. but without it, i’m nothing but noise, static filling up a room. i don’t know who i am without the feedback, the affirmation, the constant reassurance that i exist in a way that matters to someone else.
maybe that’s why i keep chasing it. not because i think their approval will fix me, but because i don’t know how else to feel alive. if they like me, maybe i can pretend for a moment that i like me too. that i’m more than the sum of all the ways i’ve tried to fit in.
but the truth is, i don’t like me. i never have. and no amount of applause or affection or fleeting connections will change that. it’s a cycle, this desperate need to be seen, to be liked, to be enough. i keep hoping that if i collect enough of their approval, it’ll finally add up to something whole.
it doesn’t, though. it never does. instead, i’m left with this endless, aching question: if they stopped liking me, what would i have left?
i don’t know. i’m too afraid to find out.
“(…)the constant reassurance that i exist in a way that matters to someone else.” yes.
Mate, when I saw this post headline I was like, nah let me get in there and prove this person wrong, that you don't have clarity yet, buuut... Well the lines did hit home. Hard. But my game is to loose my personallity cause only then you can truly become human. It's the idea of "me" "myself", "this is what I am", "this would be what I think about this particular social situation", "I would/wouldn't do this" all this, is plain crap that we are..... tricking? ourselves into. I wish I had a better way to express this. Seriously man it's perfect when- a human just gotta worry about what to have for dinner, if we are gonna have it at all that is. I want that.