NEVER GOOD ENOUGH

I always felt like I wasn't good enough with her.  --
Or that she thought I wasn't good enough.

She always had to be smarter. She always had to be wittier.
She continually took the credit for things I had done.. and I let her because the only person it hurt was me.

If I had a story, she had one that topped it.
If something good happened to me, it was because of something she had done.

If I ever tried to keep something as just mine, she'd guilt me until I gave her that too.

One day, I said "I'm sincerely sorry that I'm not good enough for you..."

And I walked away.

Not because I wasn't good enough... but because I knew that I was.

NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU

I've been struggling with a relationship lately. Lots of angst, lots of feelings, lots of frustration. I was dumping my heart out into the lap of one of my dearest friends this week and she said this to me:

This isn't about you. 

This is completely their issue. 

It isn't yours.

And as I thought about it more and more, it became something that was more and more important for me to internalize... because I've kept trying to make it my issue. And I probably try to make a lot of issues into my issues.

Because, you see, if things are my issues, well I can fix those. If something is off because I did something wrong or I said something that offended, if I'm the one being unreasonable... those are all things that I can fix. And if I can fix those things, then I can fix the relationship, right?

But if they're not my issue... well, there's really only so much that I can do about that. There's only so much of that I can fix. In fact, there's relatively little of that I can fix.

At the same time... it's a little bit freeing to start to internalize that. I'm very good at making things my fault. I apologize for everything. I have apologized for a lot of things that I didn't really think were my fault at all. But acknowledging that not everything is me... Well, that's freeing.

And maybe that doesn't fix the relationship. Maybe it won't ever be.

But it starts to fix me... and that's a start.

COVERING AND FINDING YOURSELF

I have been operating under a mask for a long time.

I can't even decide the right image to use for this...  Under a mask, a leash, in a fishbowl? Maybe it doesn't matter.  In the end, I simply haven't been myself.

I have felt like I needed to cover up who I was. I needed to make her prettier. I needed to make her different. Why? So that other people would be okay with me. Or because I felt that I had to portray a certain image because of things and people that I was involved with.

It's really only been recently that I've come to take that off a little and have really begun to understand just how suffocating it is to not allow yourself to be you. How constricting it is to always be hiding what you think and feel, to always be playing a role.... and how the more you play it, the more you lose who the real you is.

And you finally are pushed to the brink and you rip off your mask/leash/bowl and step into the light and it feels so good.  But at the same time, it's awfully scary.  Because you're not quite sure who you are in the light anymore... and now you have to find her.

But it's a good kind of finding.

THE PATH I COULD HAVE AVOIDED

As I meander down this little path of healing I'm on right now, there is a voice inside my head that speaks. It tells me that I wouldn't have to be walking this path, if I had only listened.

This path isn't a surprise. I have people in my life, who love me, who saw it coming.... before I even knew the path was there, they saw it coming. And I was warned, cautioned, advised, whatever you want to call it -- out of love, out of concern for me.

But I set off on the path anyway, sure that I could handle it.

And so that voice, it says, "You could have avoided all of this if you had only taken the advice given to you in the first place."

The voice is probably right. I could have.

But I think that, in some ways, I needed to walk the path anyway. I needed to walk it out. I needed to learn the lessons for myself. I needed to change how I thought about myself, and I'm not sure that would have happened in the same way if I had never set out on it in the first place.

This time, heading out on this rocky part of the path was a conscious choice. I know why I'm on it because I chose it. And I'm not seeking out closure this time or the reasons.  I don't need them.

I know why I'm here. While it may not be what I would have chosen when I first started out, it's what I'm choosing now. And perhaps that's something I needed to come to on my own.

THE HOLES THAT DON'T FIT

Many years ago, I was part of an online group of friends, lovely people that I loved and cared for (and still do).  But I ended up leaving the group for an extended period.

A lot of things happened. I changed. I changed a lot.

And then I tried to go back.  But, it just didn't work.

There were a lot of things going on there, but in retrospect, I think that a lot of it was that I had changed.  But the hole that was left for me was in the shape of the person I had been before. I kept trying to shove my changed self into a hole that no longer fit me, and I eventually gave up. Who I had been and who I was just no longer matched... and I couldn't figure out how to reconcile the two.

---------

Maybe I've been going through something similar lately. I've changed over the last couple years -- and in ways that I'm pleased with. Ways that I don't wish to unchange.

And I think that I've been trying to force people to fit into my changes. That I've asked them to change in ways themselves that parallel mine.  And perhaps they have been doing the same... changing and expecting me to line up accordingly.

I think that perhaps I've come to a place where I am beginning to understand that happiness won't come by expecting others to change for you, or expecting others to fit into your changes, or to change in the same ways that you are. It comes in knowing who you are, who you've become -- and living accordingly with who that is.

Sometimes that means accepting that the people who fit with you before... don't. And that doesn't make anyone bad. It just means that the longer you stay trying to shove each other into who you want them to be now, the longer you'll both be unhappy.  That perhaps the answer is to just let each other be changed - and maybe that means parting ways.  That is an okay thing

Not all roads run together forever. But that doesn't mean that both roads don't lead to somewhere worthy of going.