“I was worried I wouldn’t be enough for you. That’s why I lied. That’s what I’m afraid of. Not being enough. Not good enough, not smart enough, not pretty enough.”
Sophia Bush as Brooke Davis on One Tree Hill
I have spent my entire life feeling inadequate. Constantly feeling less than. Not good enough. Not worthy. I get an “A” in school, not enough. You are smart you should get that grade. I get a “B”, you are smarter than that. You just don’t try hard enough. Every time I express a little discomfort in any situation, new job, school choice, life choices it all comes back to how good I am, but I do not give myself enough credit. It isn’t that I am not giving myself enough credit, it is that these expectations are unreasonable and unrealistic.
I have been doing some intense work in therapy these past few weeks and I have to say, fuck this shit. I do not like opening these wounds and trying to heal from them. But I need to. If I don’t, I am going to continue to live as a shell of myself. A person that is never fully happy. A person that is never fully fulfilled.
On the surface I know I am smart. I know I am good at my job. II am a great mother. I am a writer. A poet. A lover and a fighter. A beautiful contradiction I like to say. And I am enough, but I am never good enough. The expectations everyone has for me are so fucking high. They are completely unrealistic. I am not perfect and the fact that they want me to strive for perfection is so much why I always fall short. Not in reality, but in my mind because ‘I am better than that.’ I am sure some of you know what it is like to constantly feel like you have to live up to this imaginary version of yourself that you have been brainwashed into believing is real.
“We depend on others to build us up and develop our self-worth so much that we forget to rely on our own beliefs and judgments.”
Rosa Beriguete – Embrace the Glorious Mess That You Are: Unleash Your Inner Goddess
Shit, if that isn’t me right now. I have depended on how everyone else sees me and what I can and can’t do that I no longer seem to know what I believe.
I am still not sure what I believe, but what I do know is that most of what everyone else believes is not it. I do not want this job, I do not want to be a robot, I want to have meaning in my life and touch people on a real and personal level. As an accountant that is not going to happen. And that is no dig at those who love that work, but at the end of the day, I am in this career because I believed this is what I was supposed to do based on others’ expectations. I have created a world that revolves around what I was supposed to do. Never what I wanted to do.
That ends now. It is not going to be overnight and that is another thing I really have to realize, but I can start taking the steps to take my life back. To be the one in control. I can’t control everything but I can control how I live and what I do. And that is what I need to focus on. Not trying to control the narrative others have of me. I do not want to go above and beyond anymore in certain things. Why should I? Especially when my heart is not fully in it.
I do not need to go that high to do what needs to get done. My therapist said that I should aim for 80% and not 110%. And honestly, that scares the shit out of me. That isn’t the best that is average. That is just enough. And the fact that I have such a fear of just being is where the problem lies.
I think the key to happiness is living for yourself. We really do focus so much on what others think and no matter how much we preach we give zero fucks, some of us have not fully graduated to zero. We still have a few that we give and those are one too many.
My goal is to truly give zero fucks and that will be a constant thing that I try to live. It will require practice and discipline. But I am ready to do the work. Are you?
