I Wasn’t Enough

Two Moments.  Two key moments in my life when I felt I wasn’t enough.  Can you think of two times in your life when you felt this way?  Can you name them?  You can probably think of many more than two moments.  Am I right?

By now, if you’ve read any posts over the last few weeks, you know that I’m doing this Gifts of Imperfection class from Brené Brown.  And you know from reading these posts that I’m busy digging deep.  Reflecting, Owning, Making Peace.  This is what I’m doing.  The class is cheaper than therapy, but I’m sure that’s next – because it is stirring up some feelings deep in me that are hard to work through.

Last week’s class lesson was about cultivating self compassion and letting go of perfectionism.  Wow.  These are hard things.  I’ve lived much of my life in the perfectionism state.  And what’s pretty funny to those who know me, is that it wasn’t until recently – within the last year – that I realized I was a perfectionist. Everyone else around me seemed to know this, but I didn’t.

Being a perfectionist isn’t a good thing.  It’s stressful, wearing, tiring and never fulfilling. As a perfectionist – it’s hard to ever have a full heart and soul.  Because we are always striving for more.  Striving for better.  Striving for perfect.  And there is no perfect.  So then where are we?  Well, we’re just left empty hearted and handed – yearning for more, when there is no ‘more’.  We are already enough, but just don’t realize it.

Through this course, and through my writing, I’m committed to overcoming perfectionism and welcoming ‘enoughism’.  You should know this about me by now, I like to make up words.  TAKE THAT perfectionism!

Let’s just call me a Recovering Perfectionist.  This means the journey isn’t over.  This means I’m still a work in progress…and I always will be.  And the recovering perfectionist in me is learning to accept that.  And learning to welcome enoughism.

One of the things that I’ve learned in my journey to overcome perfectionism is how absolutely freeing it is to embrace my imperfections and share them. I often do this through my writing…and guess what?  Many of you tell me after reading a post, that you too have similar imperfections.  How great is that?  We’re ALL imperfect. Together.  We don’t have to do imperfect alone.  We don’t.  I don’t know about you, but I’d rather walk the imperfection road with others by my side, than do it alone.  So it is in the spirit of togetherness, that I share my story.

One of the exercises in this week’s class on letting go of perfectionism and cultivating self compassion was to dig out two pictures of myself that represented times in which I felt alone or felt I wasn’t enough.  Then I was to place them in my journal and write down compassionate words that I, as my older self, would’ve told the girl in those pictures.  I put off this assignment for a whole week.  Telling myself I was too busy to fit it in. That I needed to do it on a day in which I had enough uninterrupted time to go through some old pictures.  Well…that was a bunch of crap. I’ll call it right here.  I was avoiding an exercise I knew would be painful.  Who wants to revisit a time in which you felt alone or felt like you weren’t enough, visit a time when you weren’t perfect?

I finally sat down yesterday to do it.  And I was right  It was hard.  Really hard.  But I did it.  I found two pictures that represented two separate times in my life in which I felt like I was not enough.  One was a picture of me as a child – around the time of my parent’s divorce.  The picture was taken by my Dad on one of our ‘every other weekends’.  The other was taken approximately twelve or thirteen years ago. It was a picture of the dog my ex-husband and I had bought together not long after we married.  I was struck by the feelings that came up for me looking at both of the pictures. In the one of me as a child, I look happy.  I look content.  But when I look closer at the picture, I remember what I often felt…

I wasn’t enough to keep my family together.  

When I look at the second picture of my dog, Jake.  I remember it was taken in a room that I spent a lot of time in – the spare bedroom we used as an office/craft room. The picture reminded me of how much time I spent alone, with my dog – waiting for my husband to come home from work.  It was in that room that I felt like I would always be second to my husband’s job.  It was in that room that I realized…

I wasn’t enough to keep my family together.

Wow, did the tears start to fall then.  I’d never made the direct connection before.  The similarity in what I felt as a child, to what I felt as an adult – and how divorce was centered in both.  First, my parents’…then my own. In both cases, I felt alone.  I felt like I was not enough, would never be enough to keep my family together.

In reality of course, my parent’s divorce had nothing to do with me.  Both of my parents consistently reassured me, explained to me that their divorce was theirs alone.  That it was not a divorce of me, I was not the cause.  But I believe I thought I could or should be the solution.  I think every child of divorce may feel that way at some point.  Feel they are the cause, and if not the cause, they at the very least should be the solution.  They should be enough reason to make it work.  They should be enough to keep the family together.

As an adult, and someone who has also gone through a divorce, I now realize the oversimplification of those childhood thoughts.  I realize the complexity of relationships and the difficulty of marriage.

My own marriage was one that couldn’t survive, despite having a child together.  Noah may someday also feel that he wasn’t enough to keep it together.  And of course, it had nothing to do with him. My feelings of loneliness and not being enough were mine alone to own, not my husband’s, not my son’s.  The point of this post isn’t about placing blame for the repercussions of my parents’ divorce or the demise of my own marriage.  This is about me realizing I consistently carried a message in my mind and heart of never being enough.  And this message also led to my belief that because I wasn’t enough, this was my fate.  This was the way it was supposed to be.  If I can’t keep my family together as a child, how could I possibly keep my own family together as an adult? My thoughts of being undeserving of love and acceptance were likely to sabotage any adult relationship I had.

The key now, is being able to look at the divorce of my parents and separate my childhood feelings of that experience from my life as an adult.  It is likely that experiencing the divorce of my parents influenced my feelings of inadequacy for much of my life.  As a child I wondered, If my Dad didn’t choose me over a new life, then how could anyone else possibly pick me over anything else?  This is what has been playing in my head all these years.  Today, I know much different.  Today, I understand life – and marriage – isn’t that simple.  I know that it wasn’t about my Dad not choosing me as a a child.  I understand the complexity of human emotion, the hardness of marriage and sharing a life with another person as you both change and grow.  I understand that often, the growth of a married couple doesn’t always happen in parallel or intersection, but rather in two separate and opposite directions.  And often, that separation becomes too wide to bring back together.  Today, I understand that another’s choices aren’t always a direct reflection of how they feel about me, but rather how they feel about themselves.

The beauty of looking at those pictures yesterday, was my realization that I’ve always been enough.  That, the decisions of others are their decisions, not mine.  I realized that their decisions are not direct reflections on the importance of me as a person.  Looking at the picture of my dog Jake and remembering how alone I felt in my marriage at that time – well, that is clear to me now.  But it wasn’t then.  I didn’t realize then that I felt alone or inadequate.

What is even more clear to me now, is that things happen to all of us.  We all have experiences, relationships, emotions that lead us to feelings of inadequacy, feelings of aloneness, feelings of not being enough.  And the situations that lead to these feelings are just that, situations.  They are not defining of who we are.  They are not indicators of our worth.  We are always enough.

I was always enough.  As a child of a divorce.  As a divorced person myself.  I was always enough.  I am still enough.

And so are you.  Despite whatever situations or events that have happened in your life to make you feel you aren’t…you are.   Accept yourself and your situations for who and what they are.

I’m learning to forgive myself and my perfectionism.  Learning to accept my imperfections and welcome my enoughism.  Thank you for joining me on the journey as I continue to dig deep and Reflect, Own and Make Peace. It’s a whole lot brighter on the recovering side of perfectionism..and fulfilling.  Much more fulfilling.

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P.S.  I hope it is understood that this post is not about blaming, but about me owning my feelings of inadequacy.  About me taking the experiences I’ve had in my life, learning from them and moving forward.  Remember my quest for Less Judging, More Loving?  Well, that’s right where I’m coming from.  I’m sensitive to the perceptions readers have when I’m writing about the people in my life.  Please know that this post came authentically from a place of revelation for me, a place of learning – and a place of love.