Selfish. It’s what you call your best friend when you’re mad that she cancelled on hanging out for a date with her boyfriend or what you call your sister when she doesn’t want to be your personal therapist for the fifth time this week. It’s what you’re called when you prioritize a term paper over opening night of your friend’s play or when you can’t afford the gas to pick a friend up from work.
This word understandably has bad connotations. It means that you are reckless with and ignorant of another person’s feelings and prioritize your own needs above all else. It’s a flaw, it’s rude, and it’s emotionless—incapable of empathy and any sort of understanding. However, selfishness itself isn’t the only thing that is that is selfish; when you judge that another person is acting selfishly, you are being selfish too.
My freshman year of college, my depression and anxiety were at their worst. I remember lying in bed for hours, staring at the same crinkled ruffle on my pillowcase, begging myself to get up and go to class or do my homework. I had determined that I was just being dramatic and that I was deadweight in the lives of everyone I cared about, so who would care if I got a bad grade on a paper or skipped out on presenting a group project?
I remember coming home for the weekend and having my little sister ask if I would go with her to the store to pick up a few things for a party she was having. I promptly told her no; I was tired and wanted to stay home, and I was sure I would just mess things up and that my sadness would ruin her day. She was upset and begged me to come with her, saying it would go so much faster if I would go too and that she didn’t want to go alone. Still, I said no and was called selfish as she stormed out the door.
I look back at this moment and get upset with myself, wishing I had gone with her. But the girl I am now is not the girl I was then. Back then, I was depressed, insecure, and completely out of my element. Because of that, I was selfish, but not out of lack of consideration for others, but because of a distorted perception of myself as incapable and burdensome. I honestly believed that others would be better off without me.
Let me be clear: being mean to someone is never okay, no matter how bad things are. It is never okay to allow someone to rely on you and then back out last minute just because you don’t feel like it or to treat someone like they’re dispensable and unimportant. I am not saying that selfishness doesn’t exist, rather, I am asking you to recognize there is often more to the story than we realize, and what is “selfish” and what is not is not always black and white.
As that year continued, I spent day after day behind the closed door of my small student bedroom, declining every invitation to go out, whether it be something as simple as grabbing takeout or as social as a basketball game. In my mind, I was boring and would only ruin things for everyone else. To try and improve my own self-image, I began desperately trying to prove that I had a purpose.
Being an English major, I offered to proofread and give feedback on anyone and everyone’s papers, pouring hours upon hours into it as a desperate attempt to make people like me. To distract from my own sadness, I hyper-focused on the problems of everyone around me, staying up late to text a pep talk to my friend back home and neglecting my own homework late to help another friend study for a test.
I was anxious and obsessive. Having struggled with OCD my whole life, the displacement I felt at college amplified my compulsiveness. I would do things like constantly checking to make sure that the apartment door was locked and constantly closing the blinds because I was worried that someone would look in the windows. To those around me, this was funny—they didn’t understand how serious these worries were for me. They would make jokes or play tricks on me to see my “hilarious” reactions, and I would laugh them off, hiding the reality that I was a mess inside.
Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I began to seriously seek help and try to make a change. In order to do that, I had to face my own problems instead of everyone else’s, and I started saying no to things in order to take care of myself. When I asked for the jokes and pranks to stop, I was called a buzzkill. When I turned my phone off before bed so I couldn’t see the nightly crisis texts until morning, I was called a bad friend. When I started prioritizing my own schoolwork over everyone else’s, I was called selfish.
I was called a “bitch,” heartless, mean, and all sorts of other things. It was hard to disappoint people, but as I started taking care of my own needs, I realized that I had worth outside of what use I had for others, and I became hopeful again. Suddenly, the world wasn’t such a bad place. I could enjoy parties and basketball games, and I could be fun and happy and carefree. By prioritizing myself, I realized that I could care about and help other people without taking on their struggles. Being selfless doesn’t mean neglecting yourself.
It can be incredibly difficult to recognize when to prioritize yourself and when to prioritize someone else. Sometimes the right call is to miss class to take your friend to the doctor or to cancel a date to help your friend get over a breakup. However, the decision to drop your own needs isn’t always the right one, and it is important to treat yourself the way you would treat anyone else. If you’re having an anxiety attack about a test, it’s okay to cancel the big girl’s night out to study or to tell your friend that you need to give advice on her boy drama a different time. Self-care isn’t selfish, even if that’s what you’re called because of it.