You Absolutely Are Enough

I have never been enough.

The me that I am has never been enough. That person has never been good enough for others … not my family, not 99% of the friends I once had, not my teachers, not my employers, not even strangers.

From as early as I can remember people have been telling me that I’m too this or too that … not enough of what they want me to be, not enough of what is better for them, not enough of what is acceptable, palatable, malleable …

I spent my childhood being beaten, yelled at, told how to dress, how to speak, what to eat, how to appear, how to be acceptable, what to like, what not to like, who to like, who not to like …

I spent my teenage years being told much the same this time dictated by the social hierarchies and psychopathy of my peers in school … and then in adulthood by employers, “friends”, colleagues, and strangers online.

It has never stopped … the judgment, the abuse, the attempts at control.

I have always been “not enough”.

Not smart enough. Not good enough. Not considerate enough. Not Black enough. Not thin enough. Not feminine enough. Not educated enough. Not quiet enough. Not social enough.

… and at the same time people say I’m too smart for my own good. Too kind. Too considerate. Naive. Too Black. Too fat. Too masculine. Snobby and over-educated. Talk too much. Too forthcoming.

I’m amazing and I’m also an asshole. I’m generous and I’m also manipulative.

There is no way to win.

There was no point in my life where I was allowed to be just myself … a person who worked hard to hold onto the best of themselves in the face of abuse … a person that rose out of trauma and loss and pain and became someone stronger, better, kinder, wiser … a person that worked hard to be someone who doesn’t make the world a worse place because of their own pain … a person who exists in the light, in positivity, in reality and not delusion … a person who I am proud to be.

Every person I have ever met has wanted me to change, has wanted me to be someone different, something different … more accommodating, more compromising, more understanding of their specific needs, issues, damage and failings as people.

Every person I have met has done NONE of the work to become healthy, but are always so quick to hate on me, be jealous, be angry at me for having done my own work … for being more evolved, more stable, more grounded, stoic, focused and successful.

They dislike me for making different choices than they would, for living differently, for understanding the world differently.

They dislike me for not being angry, narrow-minded, and susceptible to nonsense.

They dislike me for not choosing the same paths they did, the paths wrought with bad decisions, selfishness, brainwashed decisions, groomed perceptions, and lack of self awareness and self love.

They dislike me using my brain, taking a higher road, seeing a bigger picture.

Every version of you that exists is different in the reality of every person you meet.

You are NEVER the you that you think you are to anyone and that includes yourself.

Your perception of yourself is false and biased and a little delusional … and it doesn’t match the version of you that your parents, your friends, your coworkers, or strangers see.

Technically, no one knows you, not even you.

In EVERY person’s mind you are someone completely different.

If you’re looking honestly at the world, you can’t truly please anyone without a lot of compromise and acting and catering. Being your authentic self is rarely encouraged or celebrated.

I don’t believe in compromise when it comes to other people.

I don’t believe any relationship is made better through mutual concessions.

I don’t believe you should have to carve out parts of yourself for other people in order for those people to be happy and love you.

I don’t think sacrificing aspects of yourself for other people should be necessary for love and acceptance.

I don’t think any relationship built on that can survive without resentment and misery and loss of self.

People are flawed in all kinds of ways … and you either accept that fact or you don’t.

You either support people or you don’t. You either understand people or you don’t.

And I don’t mean people who are out in the world harming other people. I don’t mean people who are out in the world doing evil and ruining the world for everyone else … I don’t mean people who knowingly exist unchanging because they delight in other people’s pain and discomfort.

I don’t mean those people.

You can only ever be yourself … your best self, the best version of yourself that you can look in the mirror at and love and cherish and be proud of … That version of you is the most important one.

The one that makes YOU happy. The one that fulfills you and allows you to share light and positivity with others; the one the gives back to the world that they inhabit.

That version of you is more than enough and it will always be a target for miserable, broken, evil, negative people.

Most people don’t like me and I have met A LOT of people who hate me and think I shouldn’t exist, wish I didn’t and encourage me not to.

I have met people who delight in telling me everything they think is wrong with me and why I’m a disappointment or a problem or a menace to society and some of those people include my own family.

I am not well liked, appreciated, or seen by the majority of people.

I can count my true friends on one hand and that is how it should be.

Quality over quantity.

With whom can you TRULY be 100% yourself? With whom can you be 100%, scarily, wholeheartedly honest and have no secrets? With whom can you trust with your deepest fears and concerns and never be judged?

With whom can you share everything and show all your weaknesses and also gain needed strength from? Who in your life can you say knows EVERYTHING about you, sees you, and loves you for who you have been, who you are now, and who you might be in the future?

Very few … maybe one or two?

I would rather be alone than continue to lose parts of myself to awful people.

I spent my early life being abused, mistreated, and hated by people for just trying to live my life honestly and authentically that it became more beneficial and more peaceful for me to spend the rest of my life as a recluse with a couple of people who love me for me.

I made a promise to myself that I wasn’t going to sacrifice more of myself for people who don’t matter (and very few people actually do).

You are worth more than you give yourself credit for. You are more needed in the world than you think you are. Who you are is more beautiful than you probably think and more valuable than other people think as well.

Loving yourself doesn’t automatically guarantee that other people will love you … in fact self love and self value tends to make unhealthy people dislike you most of the time, but those people don’t matter … very few people truly do.

YOU MATTER.
YOU ARE ENOUGH.

Do you. Always.