Who and how can anyone know they answer to that question? I’m trying really hard to figure that out. As someone who focuses way too much on my own flaws and misgivings, I struggle daily with guilt, shame, and feeling like I am not enough. But, a deep discomfort arises when it is accompanied with a deep longing. For what? I don’t know. It. The thing. Feeling good. Being good. Being admired. Being known. Being enough. Having enough. And therein lies the problem. What is enough and how do I get to the point of knowing that I am AND have enough.
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A favorite quote (of which I’m guilty of not knowing the origin) is actually painted in my kitchen: “the secret to having it all is knowing you already do.” Because who doesn’t “want it all?” The house, the kids, the car, the “American Dream” that has somehow led to an insane desire to “keep up with the joneses.” For me, at least, the internal struggle came from started at a young age. There is no single trauma that I am able to pinpoint and there is no one to blame, which is why it’s harder to find peace and comfort. Because it’s there. A want, a longing, a desire to feel comfortable being me. Knowing and feeling that being me is enough. Just that. Enough. But I never knew (and still don’t) know how to get there. Self-confidence is, in my opinion, a double edged sword. How is one comfortable enough in their own skin to actually say what they want and think? I’m 43 years old and still trying to figure that out. I am objectively aware that I am a smart, kind, relatively attractive human but I still care entirely too much what other people think of me, and therefore my family and my life choices.
Fear of judgment is and was an irrational fear that I am still trying to overcome. Again, there’s no single event or root cause that I am able to pinpoint as the cause of this fear. Religion, parents, institutional everything? Self awareness vs. self centered? Self confidence vs. bragging? An innate desire and need for comfort. Comfort and pleasure are seemingly a universal goad, so why does it feel like it comes so much easier for some people than others? Why can’t I just be happy with what I have, especially when it is objectively and subjectively try that what I have is most certainly MORE than enough.
Insert drug and alcohol use and here. I found, and still find, comfort in numbing the overwhelming noise in my brain that causes me to question everything and everyone around me. Do they like me? Did I say the right thing? Make the right face? Get my point across the right way? I’m still trying to figure out the root of this problem, but my gut (and past research and writing “career”) tells me that it goes beyond what is wrong with me and into what is wrong with the human experience and human nature as a whole. In a nutshell — why do I feel this way? Unfulfilled but also so full of gratitude and privilege that I feel guilty for having as much as I do and guilt and shame that it feels like there is literally nothing I can do to make the world a better place?
