I am enough. I had that phrase as the screen saver on my phone for over a year. I put it there to remind myself that I am enough and to hopefully have it seep into my subconscious mind so I would start to believe it. I’ve heard that all of our insecurities come from believing that we are not enough. I agree with that. I’ve been practically obsessed with my insecurities for years. All it takes is to read any of my old poems or almost anything I’ve written, and you’ll find me talking about it. I’ve talked about it for so long because I was aware of it very early in life. It didn’t serve me well then, and it hasn’t served me well as an adult. When I was young, I was sincerely happy to have a name for what I felt, but at the same time was expressing my frustration and sadness about what I felt in my writing. I didn’t know how to change it. I only knew how to express it. As a teenager, that sincerity turned into pessimistic self-loathing. And I still didn’t know how to change. I just did my best to fake it. But since becoming an adult added to everything else, it’s turned into people-pleasing, being whoever I thought I needed to be accepted, and fear. Flat out fear of not being enough.
Being the blessing that it is, tapping brought forth the roots of that poisonous belief that I’m not enough in an empowering way. From about age five to 10, I had three experiences that really shaped how I saw myself. First of all, I was already desperate for an emotional connection. I didn’t have sisters. I didn’t have siblings or cousins close in age. My family is extremely small yet was distant. And my mother was occupied with her personal challenges, so she was emotionally detached. I had quite a thirst for connection at a very young age. So the three experiences are from my friendship with a girl named Shamesha, another girl named Shywan, and two girls I went to school with whose names I can’t even remember anymore. Shamesha’s brother and my brother played high school football together, and through them, we became friends. We visited each other’s house because we lived around the corner from each other. But as second and third graders, we had a tumultuous friendship. Every time we disagreed or got into an argument, she defriended me and taunted me about being poor and her having things I didn’t. I remember feeling very small every time. I remember being embarrassed and ashamed. I remember feeling like she looked at me like I was less than. Nonetheless, after every argument, we made up at the behest of her mom. But this was our pattern. After so long, I did begin to feel like I was less than, but I kept taking her back as my friend because I wanted to have a friend even though she wasn’t very nice to me. I don’t remember what happened for us to no longer be friends, but eventually, Shywan and I became friends.
Shywan lived across the street from my brother’s girlfriend. I would have to go with him to her house because my mom was at work and my brother had to babysit. We eventually became friends, and while we didn’t have a tumultuous friendship, we did have a friendship based on control and manipulation. She expected me to do whatever she told me and agree with everything she said and did. When I didn’t, she would get mad at me and withdraw until I pursued her to make up. I remember feeling like I had to be careful to maintain our friendship. I was always really sad when she would withdraw or ignore me and talk to our other friend Nikki in front of me. I wanted to keep her as a friend, so I would be the one to initiate us making up. I would be the one to have to get her to talk to me again. The way she could turn off and on with me made me feel like I wasn’t valuable to her. I felt like I was disposable.
At school, it wasn’t much different. The two girls in my class I talked to the most and ate lunch with every day would just randomly stop talking to me and not want me near them. They would sit at another table at lunch and talk and laugh amongst themselves while making it obvious they were talking about me. I remember thinking they were making fun of me. I was deeply hurt every time this happened. I never knew why they would do this or when it was coming. Some days I had them as friends, and other days I didn’t. It was really difficult to process at that age, so my only explanation was that something was wrong with me. I would repeatedly befriend them when they were ready to be my friend again and then find myself in the same position when they ignored me again. That thought of something being wrong with me just kept getting reinforced every other week.
Now, here I am, nearly 40 years old, and I realize that I’ve been trying to figure out what it is about me that causes me not to be enough. I’ve been making guesses and trying to turn myself into whatever I came up with so that others will view me as valuable and not throw me away. The whole time not being who I really am. This morning I found out that while I’ve addressed the other incidents that I interpreted as a matter of me not being enough, I hadn’t addressed these experiences in this context. I didn’t see those experiences as a source for feeling this way. It has allowed me to see that the void of connection I felt that made my need for their friendship seem so vital has to be filled by me. I can’t change what I didn’t get. I can change what I give to myself. I feel like that’s what I’m doing now. I forgive myself for thinking I wasn’t enough, and as I said in a recent post, I will have compassion for the little girl that felt that way. She was always enough, and so was I.