My critic knows me and pushes me. To do more, to be more, but also to doubt and loathe myself

"Use my name.”

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“D-u-d-i,” he spelled it out for me.

We were eating at a friend’s house and their shanah rishonah couple was there too. I’ve met their new son-in-law a few times, and he never fails to make me laugh — and cringe.

“Someone should write an article about me. I’m an interesting guy and I do a lot of good in the world.”

While I snorted into my vegetable soup, I was also impressed by his brash, straightforward nature. What you see is what you get. He wasn’t couching his words in niceties or false humility. No, he’s a 20-something-year-old kid who thinks it would be cool to have an article written about him, and he said so.

“I’m a diagnosed narcissist,” he said a little later in the conversation.

“Oh, really,” I said mildly. He had personality — definitely; self-absorbed — yes, but that’s fairly normal these days. The label “narcissist” seemed a little too harsh.

“Who diagnosed you?” His shver humored him.

“Myself,” Dudi said (after first joking that it was his father-in-law’s diagnosis).

I started to point out that he wasn’t qualified to make a diagnosis and that narcissists usually don’t recognize their narcissism, but he cut me off.

“The only difference between me and a doctor is a piece of paper.” This time I visibly snorted into my soup.

And then he said another gem — I forget how it came up in the conversation: “When I went to shul, they asked me if I was a Levi. I told them no, but I’m a talmid chacham, and they respected that, so they gave me shlishi.”

I found myself repeatedly returning to the seudah in my mind; the conversation, the tenor. It was a lot of fun, there were plenty of laughs, even when I did tell Dudi that I’m going to wipe the floor with him after he went on about the gender wage gap, saying it was called for because men are just better — facepalm, I know!

But as my husband always points out, “Esther, you look for meaning and messages in everything — some things just are.” He’s a funny kid, he does good things, he dotes on his wife, and maybe he has an overinflated sense of self. Nu, nu, we all grow up.

Truth is, I’m jealous of his bloated ego, because inside me is a not-so-niggling critic. A critic that demands more and more, and even when I comply, it tells me I can do better. It’s unrelenting, and so embedded in me that most of the time I think it’s me, and only in moments of clarity can I separate me from the critic that lives within.