enough
22 december 2018
never enough.
I’ve been a bit MIA but now that it’s break time from work, I’m gettin back at it. I’ve often struggled with feeing enough. And more than feeling enough, feeling good enough.
It’s a tricky thing, in regards to adoption, I often wonder and have felt that if I had just been this or that I would have been good enough to stay. That if I would have been born a boy, then I would have been good enough to stay with my birth parents and not be abandoned. When I learned there were 5 days I was potentially with them, I wondered what I could have possibly done better in order to be worthy to stay.
Growing up, I am fortunate to have grown up with a mom who had standards but also told me to relax and be happy. But still, I felt a degree of pressure to pressure myself. If I got a 90, it wasn’t good enough. If I got on the honor roll, it wasn’t enough. I wanted to get the best grades and get into the best schools because I wanted to be as much of ‘the best’ I could be so that if I ever did meet my birth parents they would have no choice but to be proud of me, to be impressed of me and to see that I have value.
There’s a part of that, that is an appreciation…of sorts— taking the negative of being abandoned and making it a positive for myself and a motivating force behind what I do. Take the negative things I felt about not growing up with them and not knowing them and see that loss as the thing that allowed for the opportunity I was given: growing up in a loving family, in a pretty (admittedly) privileged life. Then there’s also a kind of F-you about it that comes from an ager about the loss. I am but I also am NOT the baby that was left outside on the street, like trash on the side of the road. I did a lot to compensate all those negative feelings of being worthless because of my beginnings. It’s an ever swinging pendulum between the two extremes.
It’s an ongoing processing of self-worth and self-value in a lot of different factors. But what I’m coming to see and learn and try and remember and believe is I am enough. I am good enough. And it doesn’t have to be such a battle to feel good enough to be accepted, loved or treated well.
