Mirror Image

I could think of no good reason why I shouldn’t like Dwayne.

We had the same mates on Facebook and liked the same clubs and bands. He was sweet, good-looking and efficient, and like me, was prepared to stay at work late when the team was under pressure, yet I still hated his guts to the extent that I didn’t feel like going to work some days as it meant inhabiting the same space. I even wondered for a while if perhaps, deep down, I really fancied Dwayne – like in your standard Rom Com movie where the hero and heroine always start off hating each other – but somehow I knew it wasn’t that.

Then one day I heard him talking in a low voice to our Manager. He was criticising, without justification, the work of a colleague. It came to me in a flash why I couldn’t stand Dwayne. He was the mirror image of me! So incredibly insecure that he had a need to put other people down to make himself look better. He wasn’t sweet at all, and neither was I – just good at flattering people, telling them what they wanted to hear, manipulating them in the nicest possible way. Yuk! Dwayne moved on after that, and I started working on myself. 

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Ellie, Canary Wharf