Where I Find Loneliness

Narcissistic people are lonely people.

I have a dear old friend, who takes a mirror with him wherever he
goes. Every few seconds, he’d glance into the mirror. Never long.
Glances. Only to make sure that he’s still there, the same familiar
nose. He is deathly afraid that if he looks away for too long, he’d
forget who he is.

But everything he sees is reflected off his own eyes. That’s the problem.

My friend is convinced that there’s something wrong with his nose. The
more he looks at it, the larger the nose seems, and the larger it
seems, the closer he holds his mirror, making his nose larger still.
His, is a good sized nose, for sure. But in his own eyes, it fills up
the entire mirror.

Next time I see him, I’d snatch the mirror out of his hand and smash
it against a rock. Then he can look through the frame at his friends,
and learn to forget himself. In their minds, he would be remembered.
And in their eyes, he would finally find himself.