Not Good Enough

The title is a little depressing isn't it?  Sorry about that.  But I have a million thoughts in my head right now and my blog is the vehicle is take them out and do something with them.  That is what it was created for, so here I am.

Be warned, this is a very honest post and a probably a trigger warning for anyone reading who is feeling and does feel the same as I; not good enough.

I watched a film tonight that I had recorded the other day.  Not my usual genre at all. The Vow.  This is the one with Channing Tatum (ok maybe why I chose to watch it) and Rachel McAdam.  The one where they have a crash and she loses all her memories, including those of him, her husband.

The main focus of the film is him trying to get her to fall back in love with him.  Whilst watching the film a thought entered my head that, I will be honest, has broken me a little ever since.  I thought that in reverse, a man would never fall in love with me twice.

I have struggled with feeling not good enough all of my life.  At first, for many years, I thought that I felt like this because of my body shape, but that isn't it.  I am confident in my body as it is, and wear clothes that do not make me invisible.

Which makes it worse really, because what I do not feel good enough about is myself.  I feel a lot like the picture below.  Stranded on an island with nothing surrounding me, nothing that can reach me.

An island is probably the most accurate description of how I have always felt.  I have been single for the majority of the time since I was 18.  I don't know why.  That is just how it is.  At 38, I think a lot now that maybe this is the way that I will always be.  I have amazing friends, a lovely but small family; maybe this is how it is going to be.

I have tried online dating.  I got a lot of responses, mainly from people who wanted to make me a fetish, others that copy and pasted their messages en masse to any woman they saw and of course, the most recent encounter with a potentially dangerous man.

I have been in love (really totally in love) once in my life.  With someone who was 95% right for me but someone who I knew deep down would never love me.  But damn, I loved him.  I used to say that he broke my heart but in reality, I broke my own on someone who I knew loved me as a friend, but nothing else.  Drunken kisses and "other things" didn't help matters.  He loved me, but not my body and that was my fault.  I couldn't accept that.

Every time I meet someone I seem to strive to change myself into what I think that they want me to be.  I change who am I, and then lose myself.  I cannot get over the overriding thought that I am not good enough as I am.

Jesus this is honest isn't it?  I don't like being this honest but if I am not, my mind will shove those feelings back into the box in my brain and not think about it again for a while; which is not healthy.  Publishing this means my words, and thoughts are real and not taken back and denied in the "I am fine, honestly!" kind of way.

So where do I go from here?  I don't know.  All I know right now is that I never feel good enough and that I unconsciously run from anyone who I think may like me, for fear of rejection.  I don't want to feel like this anymore because I AM good enough.

My head knows that. I just need my heart to remember that.

Signing off now.  Thanks for listening.

Your Body Image

I have been thinking about body image a lot lately and what I have begun to realise is that how people deal with their body image is sectioned off into three groups: “The Happy”, “The Openly Insecure” and the “In The Closet Insecure”.

“The Happy” are those that have a good self image of themselves and do not let others thoughts or opinions affect that.  You are either born this like or you have worked hard in order to attain and maintain this self image.  Either way, it is the best frame of mind to be in.

“The Openly Insecure” are those that let others opinions affect how they feel about their own body image.  As a side effect to this, by accepting other’s insults and allowing that to factor into the way they think about themselves, they can also develop a “not good enough” complex. 

I spent about twenty five years in the not good enough complex so I know how this feels.  It is a feeling that creeps back into your life sometimes and so I always keep an eye out for it and mentally whack myself around the head when I feel like that.

The “In The Closet Insecure” are those that use their own insecurities about their own body image as a weapon against others whom they perceive look “worse” than they do.  This can come out in the pure insult form, which is essentially boils down to “I’ll hurt you before you hurt me” or alternatively comes out in the form of anger. 

It was this anger that confused me for a good while until I realised that that it wasn’t anger at all.  It was jealousy. 

The “In The Closet Insecure” person sees someone who may be larger than they are, or someone who they think is less attractive and if this person looks confident and happy in their own skin then their anger is immediately provoked. 

How do they have the audacity to feel better about themselves than I do?  I look better than them; why do they look happier than I do?  Their base line of thinking is that they cannot stand someone who is secure in their own self image when they perceive them to be “worth less” in their eyes than they are.  Confused by what they see, they hurl anger and abuse; trying to bring the other person down to the same state of misery as their own; not that will ever admit that.

When it comes down to it, bad body image is learned behaviour. 

No baby is born thinking that it is not good enough to be around others.  No child thinks that she/he is ugly until someone else tells them they are.  Until they socially interact with others, nobody ever links their weight to how they should be treated as a person.

I still remember when I was a little girl, watching my mum get ready to go with my dad on a Saturday.  As I watched her, I didn’t judge her against anyone else or think about how society thought that she ought to look.  She was just my mother and I thought (and still do) she looked beautiful.

I think that one of the most important things that you can teach a child when growing up is that they need to find their own sense of self.  To rely on what they think about themselves rather than letting others define who they are and what they should look like.

The question that we need to constantly ask ourselves is not “What do others think of me” but “What do I think of me”.  Because the answer to that question is all that really matters.