For most of my life a crippling sense of self consciousness paralyzed me with the fear that everyone was watching every move I made. Even worse, that behind my back, they were commenting, criticizing, mocking, gossiping, and taking pleasure in all my misfortunes. What a relief it was to realize how little I ever figured on anyone's radar. How liberating it was to understand that I was all but forgotten the moment I was out of their immediate sight. Most of all, what an unsuspected and unexpected joy it was to discover that what I'd always taken to be the crushing burden of my unsupported egomania was really, paradoxically, nothing in the end but the terror of being noticed at all.
(A childhood spent under the microscope, subjected to the magnification of an overly critical parent's omnipresent eye will leave one burdened with the sense of always being watched. From there, it's but a short, if fatal, half-step to the belief that to exist at all one should always be watched.)
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