Don’t be Echo

Words insensitively popping up on timelines and conversations out of sheer ignorance has been one of the saddest issues in today’s world. I am not talking about the mammoth-sized issues of discriminatory or derogatory comments in areas of body shaming, caste hierarchy, everyday mockery, etc., which require FBI grade attention and action but not here in this article.

Mental health, we can all agree ( y’all should be agreeing with me right now) is no joke. Staying at home has me doubting if I can remain sane through the upcoming waves of tragedy, that is washing away my college life like it is a mere stain of period blood on a white pant. But getting myself grounded by the Prime Minister has thrown an awful amount of light on mental health and how severely it goes unnoticed in Indian social environments.

No, wait, STOP! This is not yet another rant about a person’s lockdown blues. Has literally nothing to do with our girl RONA, so take deep breaths and continue reading, please?

So, words, yes. People throw around words so effortlessly because it sounds all affluent and rich. You are looking at a hypocrite and I already called myself out, so shush. Anyway, using certain important words has become a part of the colloquial dictionary in recent times, which is plain scary.

I know, “Get to the point, Lakshita” is definitely what everyone of you is mentally yelling at your phone screen, well, I will.

It’s simple. People use the word Narcissism and its other tenses or forms quite commonly. I did too, guilty as charged. The practice of self-love has become one of the epi-centers of constructing well-defined personalities, and this positive sphere of life has now somehow merged with the troubling aspects of narcissism. Until today, I did not understand the severity of narcissistic behavior. It blew my mind understanding that certain issues I have dealt with has stemmed from another person’s problem of narcissism.

Confidence, self-love, self-respect, being selfish and prioritizing yourself is important and there is no denying that. The trouble only begins when you look straight at these traits casting a veil for back-end abusive behavior.

The notions of God has always repelled me because I did not like the idea of someone I could not see or feel, gaslighting my entire existence. He ( cause of course the powerful one is a ‘He’ in this society) happens to hold the power to dictate everything for me. That man holds superiority over my universe, quite literally. More than being devoid of a moral compass, everything that God does is somehow for a reason and the reason is always right. This in turn sends earthquakes in the way of your morals and principles, successfully making you change alignments to your lifestyle.

Let’s even say for instance that there is a small discrepancy, like the pandemic right now. What would God say? Well, you all did not build another expensive house for me soon enough, so die. His fault had actually stemmed from something that you did, Oh my GOD ( pun intended ). This man thinks he is above everything but is intensely jealous of every other idea of God that humans have. He feels no remorse in killing millions, making people walk on fire and lacks empathy for a poor little child craving an orange. He is all for Capitalism and that’s why did not mind killing Karl Marx. Finally, this nonsensical excuse for a God has no intent to reflect or understand his actions. I like watching them cry for me, it makes me happy and so I do it. Why does God sound like a Dementor in the last line? *thinks deeply*

I despised the idea of someone in space doing all this to me or people I knew but completely failed to see the number of fellow God-like figures we have strutting around in earth. Down here, we can’t call it God’s Protection or God’s Will. It’s got another name and that is Narcissistic Abuse.

The reason I am going on and on about this is because so many relationships that I personally know of are of this nature, at various degrees of severity of course. The relationship could be with a parent convincing the reason for your existence is to please them, a sibling unrecognizably pushing you away to be the outcast, a friend throwing you under some bad lighting to shine better, a lover convincing you are always at fault even if the mistake was theirs’. All these are the level-1 signs of a toxic and unhealthy environment that even when a person finally breaks out of it, the victim is shattered while continuing to blame themselves, stuck on this loop of eternal abuse. Such abuse not only disturbs someone but could go to the extent of infiltrating their identity with that of the abusers’. It convinces you and I and everyone that all this was simply out of ‘love’. Well, NO. Abuse is abuse and there is no justification to nullify the trauma.

The word ‘Narcissism’ emerges from the name of a hunter from Roman Myth called ‘Narcissus’. A guy so irrecoverably obsessed with himself that he died, being a narcissist. The people who loved him, the nymph ‘Echo’ who could not understand he had a problem or stop loving him, she too died, losing herself and her voice fading out into the void.

Moral of the Story : It’s not Rome. You don’t have to be Echo.

( Check out Swati Jagdish on Instagram. Her page is very informative and enlightened me on this very topic.)