Hmmm....

On a cerebral level, I think very highly of myself, to the point of being perceived as arrogant were I to make it known. Looks, brains and personability, I think I possess in spades. I also think I'm highly gifted creatively and have the potential to be a great success as a writer.

On a visceral level, I can't help constantly feeling myself to be the lowest and most undeserving piece of shit that walks the earth. Even though the vast majority of people I talk to like me at once, I always feel they secretly despise me (even my friends, on some level), that I neither deserve nor ever will find love, that my creative output is a worthless mess, and that I'm somehow cursed, that I simply wasn't wired right and I've been doomed to eternal self-consciousness. This is at my worst--I generally manage to keep my mind on other things.

You generallywouldn't be able to tell how cripplingly low my visceral self-esteem is...even if I'm pounding with anxiety inside, I'll engage in witty conversation, look you straight in the eye, etc. It only really manifests itself in its prevention of intimacy--I'll put myself out there for a conversation, but rarely make a move, unless intoxicated. I bordered on alcohol abuse there for awhile, and it got me laid a few times, but I'm currently trying to deal in other ways.