it's all about me, me, me, me, me!

when i was in something like sixth grade, i had this shirt from contempo casuals that said worship me like the goddess i am. it was pink and adorable. the only problem was that the words were written in this elaborate cursive scrawl that was a bit hard to make out and so people would always come up to me and be like "who's the goddess jam? i never heard of her..." and i'd just be like "duh, loser, it says 'worship me the like the goddess i am' so, you know, get on your knees bitch"

i'm not even exagerating. i was like that all the time as a preteen, and most of the time as a full-blown teen as well. then, something happened. call it whatever you want. getting lame. getting old. getting a conciense. one day, i just went too far and i hurt someone who i cared about and all of a sudden i became aware of other people's feelings, and then the next thing you know, i was taking responsibility for other people's feelings, and soon after that, there was no room left for my own feelings, so i pushed them off to the side and with them went my self-esteem, my lust for life, my faith in god, not to mention my sex-drive, my social life and a whole slew of other things that no longer seemed important. i was being noble. i was being humble. i was doing the right thing .
and eventually i would be rewarded for it
but i wasn't rewarded for it. i don't know what i expected, except maybe for the sky to open up and shower me with blessings, but it sure wasn't happening. even worse, i found that when i neglected my own feelings to pick up the slack for others, they rarely did the same for me. still for some sick reason, i perservered. i was determined to be selfless, because i thought of that as a good thing.
now, i look at that word and it seems so accurate. self less. without my self, there was less of everything. less love. less fun. less faith. the truth is, i ain't no martyr. i do really, genuinely want everyone in the whole world to be happy, but if you gave me a choice between my own hapiness and that of another person, and i made that choice genuinely and from the heart, i'd choose myself, one-hundred percent of the time.
and is that really such a bad thing? i'm not saying that there aren't people who i care about in this world. i'm not saying that there aren't sacrifices worth making. i'm just saying that truly, no sacrifice is worth making if it doesn't eventually contribute to my own hapiness. no person is worth so much of what's mine that there's none left over for me. after all i've been through, the hard truth i've finally learned is that if i abandon myself to care for another, no one's going to pick up the slack for me. if i don't look out for myself, no one else will.

there's a word we generally use for someone who understands this: self-centered. in our culture, we throw this word around like in a derogatory manner, accusing people of being self-centered when we want to guilt them into doing something for us. but if we really look at this word, if we take it apart, we're left with self, as in self esteem, self worth, self actualization, to thine own self be true, and then another word: centered.
doesn't that kind of sound like it'd be better for all of us?

love always