The title of my biography will be: “Never Good Enough”
I have been accused of being self centered and making some things about me. There have been suggestions that my ego was the controlling force in my decisions. There were times it was true. Honestly, if there were things I wanted to explore and experience there were a lot of times I just created it. Instead of waiting for someone else I just did it. And if someone wanted to go on the same ride, then I was hopefully doing it right.
I great up with my dad telling me I was worthless and had not value in life. He said those exact words more times that I can count. I was never good enough and never doing the right thing. I was crashing through life with a man who wanted me to smile even if I was dying inside.
I was a fat kid once I got into my later teen years and heard about that a lot. I had a 38″ waist when I was sixteen. The summer between my junior and senior year of high school I lost weight and got into a much better look just like all those high school hottie films.
His words followed me into my adulthood. His words haunted everything I tried to do. When I did fail I was proving him right every time. Each time there was a tiny hint at failure, he was right.
In recent years I discovered that my mom’s voice was part of that too. While helping to manage her and my step-dad for the last 2 years, I discovered she was using a lot of the same language too. Her words, even though they were fueled by fear and loneliness, were tearing apart something inside of me. Nothing I did for her was good enough, and then I began seeing her differently.
I had me mom on a pedestal, one she never deserved to be on. She was a working mom. She survived 3 shitty… I mean shitty… husbands. Like really shitty. She was a survivor and in the end all the wear and tear from the men in her life turned her into someone I realized I did not like very much.
She and I, if we were ever really close, I cannot tell you when. She kicked me out of her house when I was like 13 or something like that. I had to go live with my dad. And from the previous paragraphs you can see how well that went.
I am such a damaged human being. But. I am more aware of who I am, who I want to be, more than ever. I feel helpless in my life for the first time ever at my age, with few job prospects, but with a lot of demons.
I have a shopping list of life regrets I need to deal with. I will. I will. But, I have been on a very special road for being a better me over the last 2 years. I need to keep going.