Feeling Like You’re Not Enough

Have you ever felt like you weren’t “good enough”? I know for me it has been something I have struggled with for a long time. I think I was told so many times that I wasn’t good enough that I just eventually believed it. And when you start to believe that, you start to make poor decisions, or just give up.

As much as I know my dad loved me, he didn’t always have the best ways of talking to me. Or for that matter talking to my mom and brother as well. His insecurities fell onto us. Not that I think he ever knew he was doing it, but he did, and that was wrong. My mom says that he wasn’t good with kids. But I know he was unbelievably good in other ways. I battle with that a lot. That he could be so amazing and then so mean. 

I always had a hard time with school. I had slight learning disabilities. I could study for a test and know ALL the answers. But when I’d get to the test everything went blank. I tried, I did. School just wasn’t for me. And for my dad, that wasn’t okay. Even though school wasn’t his forte either, he was always comparing me to my brother who had gotten good grades, and had “better” friends, etc. 

“Why can’t you be more like Austin?”- Dad 

“IM NOT HIM! I’M ME!”- Me 

Being compared to someone else sucks. I could never be good enough for my dad. You think that for someone who struggled in a school setting himself, who also didn’t go to college, he would have understood a little more. But I think it just made him harsher on me. He wanted to see me succeed, but it did the complete opposite. I could not take one more “I’m disappointed in you”. I gave up, I just didn’t care. Why care when everything I did was wrong?

It wasn’t just me either; he got on top of my brother too for this and that. As a kid, I had this knee jerk reaction to protect my big brother. And my dad hated it. “You’re not old enough to have an opinion,” my dad would say, which would only make me angrier! Who are you to tell me or anyone else they can’t have a say? I hated when he was mean to my brother; I’d willingly have him take it out of me than on my brother. My brother always stayed pretty quiet. I used to have a feeling that it was his way of dealing. Where I, on the other hand, was a ball of rage. I needed to get it all out.

I recently had a conversation with my brother. He opened up to me for the first time. In a long time. I asked him when did he feel like my dad honestly felt like his dad? He said not until after the divorce. (One thing you guys don’t know is that my dad isn’t my brother’s biological dad, but he raised him as his own.) But my brother dove into why he kept so quiet all this time. I had never known, but I guess I honestly didn’t realize to ask. He kept quiet as a way to stick it to my dad when he first came around. And it stuck. I know my dad wasn’t the best with kids. So Austin adopted an “I am not speaking until spoken to” rule. He kept quiet to piss off my dad.

Not only did I feel inadequate at home, I felt worthless at school with my friends.  In middle school, I was bullied to the point of going home crying every single day. The confidence I had once held in myself went right out the window. Pictures of your face posted on a monkeys body are not healthy for one’s self- esteem. Not only that but as a 14- year old girl going into high school with a face full of acne and a mouth full of braces, you don’t think you look pretty or feel pretty. Or at least I know I didn’t. At this point, I was so desperate for any type of attention I could get. And it seemed the only attention I drew was faulty at best. 

For years I felt like the mousy girl you get stuck with because your friend picked the prettier girl. It didn’t help that I hung out with some of the worst people. (I had a few great friends, but my quest for attention led me to hang around a bunch of idiots we hung around with to pass the time).

I also realized later in life my desperation for someone to love me (friend or guy wise) made everyone not want to be around me that much more. Don’t get me wrong; I had a period where you would never have known that was how I felt about myself. But I compared myself to everyone else wondering what I was doing wrong. As a kid you don’t see desperation, you see annoying. You don’t see the loneliness that sits beneath.

Being home was hard, and I hated myself. I smoked, drank, blacked out, did dumbass shit. I would get so depressed I spent days just sleeping in the dark of my room. Even as I got older, I could never let go of that feeling that I wasn’t good enough. When my dad passed, and I gained a shit ton of weight, I would cry looking in the mirror. And I called myself all the worst names: “Fat Pig, you’re so fucking fat.” I couldn’t be around other people I was so depressed. And even though I had been through depression many times, I didn’t see/know how sad I was.

Looking back, I wish I could shake that little girl and tell her she was worth it! She was beautiful even if she thought no one had noticed. She didn’t need to try so hard, she was perfect as she was. It took a very long time to say that I love myself just as I am.

With that took time, therapy, and support from everyone around me. It’s not impossible to find the light inside of yourself. I spent so much time being angry and grasping onto the moments of good that it hurt that much more when things didn’t go right. Give yourself a break. I know I needed to give myself one.

I wish I could have seen that there were people who loved me, that there are people around that I could talk to. Everything I have been through has made me who I am today, and it does suck that it took all this to make me feel okay with myself. There are days I still struggle. But the point is I found that I could love myself, that I deserved to be loved. And am loved.