Splash No. 197 - Life with Myself

Life with Myself

After a few too many social events a couple of weeks ago, I’ve entered a period of solitude, marked by long walks around the park and watching movies in bed. One of the best movies I watched recently was Edge of Seventeen, an extremely well-done coming-of-age movie with much more developed characters than the genre tends to have. In the midst of her deepest despair, the main character Nadine said a line that has stuck with me since, “I had the worst thought: I've got to spend the rest of my life with myself.” With this line, we get a sense of the level of self-loathing any high school outcast would have but also an immense truth about life itself — you can never escape yourself. Only one person has been around from my days playing wallball on the playground in elementary school to the quiz bowl competitions in high school, from seeing my cousins minutes after their births to losing to them at games, from witnessing the most beautiful sunsets to lying awake at night wondering what the point of it all is. 

In the midst of all of this solitude, I’ve felt so fully content in my own space, comfortable to just hang out with myself and the endless well of media. As I lay in my bed, watching my silly little movies with my silly little self, I felt fully content. I thought about how I’d lived so much of my life thinking about the future and reaching some impossibly perfect situation that would finally make me happy. My younger self first thought about college as a place of perfect joy or wherever I’d move after college or wherever I’d move to with a hypothetical dream wife. I imagined a burgeoning social life that would put Gatsby to shame, going on beautiful trips to tropical places with a circle of friends that were all incredibly impressed with my sharp wit, unmatched sense of humor, and hypothetical washboard abs. Instead, all it took was a 2016 film starring Woody Harrelson and a better relationship with myself.

My life is far from perfect, as evidenced by the lack of the aforementioned washboard abs. I never feel like I’m doing enough and I’m overcome with existential crises once every other Splash letter. Despite being a person who has always questioned myself, I feel like I’m starting to get better at honoring myself and my needs. Even as I’ve proudly identified as an introvert, I’ve always raged against it, refusing to accept the bounds of my social energy, even when it leads me into a funk. Even though I’m a homebody, I’ve thought that there was something wrong with me for not wanting to travel regularly. However, in the past few months, I’ve spent a lot more time looking for ways to identify and honor what I love. I’ve let myself remember that I’m a person who can get just as much joy (or maybe more) from walking in the park and touching trees as going somewhere exotic. I’ve let myself develop a taste for overpriced cold-pressed green juices. I’ve let myself off the hook for procrastinating and sat with how it makes me feel.


When I thought about Nadine’s quote, I realized that I used to feel just like her, until I started treating the person I spent the most time with like someone I loved. In my head, it would be miserable to be married to someone that you refused to forgive or that you constantly felt the need to berate, and my relationship with myself was no different. To feel okay with being around myself, I needed to do what I’d do with anyone I loved: accept them, be patient with them, and buy them green juice. Without realizing it, I had always prioritized these actions for other people, often at the cost of my own needs. To finally be able to take care of myself in these small ways is a revelation, one that I’ll revel in as long as possible.

Drops of the Week
 

• ALBUM - Diplo by Diplo - it's 2022 and my most played album this week was a Diplo record

• ARTICLE - "Have iPhone Cameras Become Too Smart" by Kyle Chayka - your phone camera is lying to you! kind of!

• POEM - "Poem 'À la recherche d’ Gertrude Stein'" by Frank O'Hara - imagine the you as self-directed

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Spring breezes,
Nikhil