A large portion of my journal is me writing out either things I plan to say, or writing out things I wish I could say, but know better than. This is an entry I wrote last night, that I know better than to tell a friend, after a talk about mental health:

You think I can’t have NPD, because I’m too nice and self-aware. Maybe that’s true - hell, I’ll take the out, who wants toxic bitch disorder on file anyway? But even if you’re right, I still have a lot of unmistakably narcissistic traits that I need to work through. I was a nasty, manipulative, arrogant, violent piece of work when I was in school. I thought I was smarter and more valuable than everyone around me. And I only started to work on myself when I moved - if I hadn’t, I would’ve kept playing that character just for the sunk cost. When I reinvented myself, I suppressed and eventually lost my violent tendencies, but the arrogance stayed there until I beat it down with Christian humility and self-denial. That’s not gone, just ruthlessly suppressed - I still indulge it, even, when I know a friend will let me. And it didn’t stop me from losing all of my relationships out of school, since all of it was skin-deep. I don’t think I’m smart or good anymore, but I still need other people to think I’m perfect, because if I’m not perfect, I’m a fuck-up.

I do not know if I’ve ever experienced affective empathy. I console and cheer up my friends because, intellectually, I know it’s the right thing to do - but I don’t actually feel their pain, or share their happiness. The closest I get is getting stressed out if someone I know is miserable and expects me to fix it, when I don’t know what to do. My sense of self is all over the place. I have caught myself changing things like hobbies, taste in music, political beliefs, how I express emotions, etc. just to impress people, because I get so much more joy from being looked up to by people I barely know than I do from anything I actually like doing, that the two are incomparable. I have had one close relationship in my entire life - with [current girlfriend] - and even with her, forcing myself to be vulnerable is excruciating, and she’s still in the dark about parts of my past because I can’t stomach the thought of bringing them up. I feign vulnerability with you, because I know you respect people who are in touch with mental health, and I want to score points. But I’ve never told you anything I thought you could use against me. (That’s why I’m writing this in my journal and not telling you, ha!) My “true self” (whatever the fuck that is) is atrophied. I barely know what I like, or what I believe, and I don’t know what I want. Every time I hear the “real me” pipe up, every time I remember what I’m actually like, or what I used to be like, I seize up like I just saw a fucking panther, and send her back to her little featureless room in my head until she remembers how to be quiet. All of my relationships that get remotely close go through the IDD cycle. Hell, I did it with you! I split on you when we were in [city name]. That’s why I didn’t talk to you for months afterwards. I only reached out again for the new year because I finally realized that I didn’t actually dislike you, I just had to grapple with all of your flaws all at once after ages of pretending you were perfect, because I wanted you to be perfect and fix me. And I finally realized I do this to everyone.

All that to say, I think I’m a narcissist. I don’t think self-awareness changes that, since, despite all the navel-gazing in the world, I haven’t weeded it out.