Never enough

The days are blending into one, using the excuse of cold weather to hibernate, when in truth I just can’t face the world. No longer willing to put on a false smile on the days I feel worthless, it’s easier to just stay at home. Too tired of coming up with excuses when I need to cancel last minute, for panic attacks, or tears, or paranoia, it’s easier to just not make plans in the first place. And some days, even writing a message is more than I can manage.

SO here I sit, alone {or as alone as I can ever be}. Alternating between trying to sit with my feelings, and unravel my innermost thoughts and fears, and running a million miles away from them. This week is alien to me – a week where I have no crutches to distract me from how I’m really feeling. No drink to numb the pain. My body has food going in, at regular intervals, so I’m not focused on those feelings of starvation and the constant battle to just.not.eat.dammit. A lifetime of using and abusing one thing or another, anything to numb the pain, to avoid having to just be me, to run away from reality. And now, nothing.

At night, when the house is quiet, and I cannot sleep, I wander, restlessly. Unsure what to do with myself in this world where everything is clear. When I can feel the beat of my heart and every single thought running through my mind. When there are no distractions, no numbness to sink into, when I’m trying to face my truths head on, speak them aloud, write them on paper and not on my body.

There’s one returning thought, that I can’t escape. One that has followed me for as long as I can remember, in truth for the past 28 years. One that my mind accepts as fact, though others have tried to tell me otherwise.

That I AM NOT ENOUGH.

One of my earliest memories, albeit one I’ve tried to push away, is of speaking my truth, terrified what he’d told me would be true, and that I wouldn’t be believed, praying he was wrong, to find out he was not. That it was me. I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t nice enough. Good girls don’t make up lies like that, nice girls don’t say such things. I can remember my mind whirling with fear, I knew it to be true, but if I wasn’t good enough, then maybe it was my fault? Maybe this was all I deserved.

This feeling of not being enough has haunted me for years. It’s played out in every relationship I’ve ever had, it’s undermined anything I’ve ever tried to do. It’s made me strive to be perfect, to put on a mask so maybe, just maybe, others don’t see that I’m not enough too. I’ve starved myself to be more perfect. Drowned myself in drink to try and be someone else, someone who is fun enough, or crazy enough. Tried to escape the reality of how I felt in drugs. Tried to be a million different ‘me’s’ depending on what I thought would make someone else love me. Thrown myself headfirst into relationships, letting them take on the role of my saviour, because if someone loves me then maybe I can’t be quite so utterly worthless? Can I?

That early September morning last year, when the world I’d built collapsed, I fell hard. For a few years there I thought I was ‘fixed’. Really, I’d done what I do best and run away. This time I escaped into the ‘perfect life’ that I built around me. Picture perfect on the outside, and the inside I pushed so far down inside me that even I could almost believe the lie. When I found out my life wasn’t what I thought, that it wasn’t mapping out the way I planned, that my husband wasn’t who he said and nothing he’d told me could be trusted, I fell apart. The facade I’d built fell down, in the space left all those feelings I’d ignored and hidden and buried came pouring back out.

Once again, I wasn’t enough. This much I was told, all that had happened was my fault and I whizzed back in time, back in that place of failure. Of letting people down. Of never being quite good enough, at anything I tried.

For five months I’ve given in, believed all this to be true. Known that there was no point in anything, because, ultimately, if I’m not enough, then nothing I do will matter, so what is the point of trying? What is the point of trying to recover?

Yet somewhere, there is a whisper. That while I’ve fallen apart, I’ve still kept the life around me going. The house, and the work, most importantly the kids. Felt the difference taking the daily negativity and criticisms that I’d seen as normal in our relationship out of the picture made, seen the difference they have made to the kids. Watched them thrive, and grow, build stronger relationships, with me nad each other. Maybe that is one thing that I am ‘enough’ at. Being a Mama. I am not perfect. But maybe it’s time to let go of perfect, I’m not sure it exists, except in a tortured mind where you’ll never quite make the grade.

In the silence of the house, listening to the pipes cooling down and the floorboards settling, feeling the peace that exists in these twilight hours, I’m sat. Tears trickling down my cheeks, today’s therapy session on repeat in my head, trying to pull a little hope out of my heart, holding onto that tiny piece of ‘enoughness’ and hoping it’s enough to build on.

Sometimes the hardest part of the journey is simply believing you’re worthy of the trip”