My whole life, it seems, has be a quest to not be enough. From the early memories about asking for another bedtime hug and being shunned away as silly, to the number of comments I wake to find each morning, and the in between, when Isobel is on her third movie of the day and I am on Twitter and my fourth coffee, I am not enough.
“What’s this 92 bullshit? Why didn’t you get a hundred?” (Isn’t 92 good enough, considering I didn’t even open the book?)
“Where did the money all go?” (I spent it. Just like you did, yours.)
“What did you do to lead him on?” (Everything, except for when I said No.)
“Why did you have so many jobs?” (Because I quit jobs and then bills still needed to be paid.)
“What do you do on those nights that you don’t sleep?” (Nothing. Try to not think. Try to do anything other than remember. Try to focus. Don’t. Fail more.)
Never enough.
It seems that since I am so far from the brand of normal that some of my friends and peers are, mediocre should suffice as a pedestal. I should be more than happy with red hair different from others, and character-giving freckles. But no, because the pale, death-toned skin underneath it all is not good enough.
I should be pleased to have these measurements, to shop for clothing in a kids section so that the waist of my pants fits the waste of my body. But no, I am not heavy enough, or tall enough, or short enough, or flat enough.
I should be so many kinds of contentment that I’m not, because I and it and everything is not enough.
So, I’ll get really honest and self-indulgent and say what nearly no one else in the momosphere says, even if they think it (which is, of course, not me inferring that everyone in the momosphere thinks it):
I want to be more than enough. I want to have a blog that people flock to. I want to wake up to more comments than I can read during my first cup of coffee. I want my name to mean something to more than the thirty or so people who regularly visit now. I want people to want to be liked by me – not me want to be liked by most, accepting being disliked by only those that I dislike.
Why? Because it’s a stepping stone, as I see it, to being far more than enough. To having a book. Being an authority of something, not just a hasher of some things.
But more than this, it’s that I frankly look to those comments that do come rolling in as a sign of acceptance. Of being part of something. Of being okay in your eyes. Good. Talented, maybe. Insightful. Funny. Whatever it is the flavour of your words leaves on my tongue. And I want to feel that way more, the more I don’t.
Yet, I don’t want the spotlight, either. I know. What?
I had a bit of a mini-meltdown with the book. Too many, saying too much niceness. It’s wrong. It’s unearned. I am not enough and it was far from enough, yet there you were. And you buttered my fresh-from-the-oven thinking into believing for just a few moments that I could be enough and more.
But me? Those seconds are really only moments. They never last much longer than it takes for you to get out of bed with me and throw away the condom. You could have been there for six hours and during that whole contortionism, I’d have felt amazed by your indulgence in me, but then, by the time your back is turned and you’re spent, I am back to being a dirtied version of a little girl who got to hear on a daily basis:
“You’ll never be a beauty queen, you might as well face it.”
“I gave up everything and fought my ass off to have you, and this is what I fought for.”
“I shouldn’t have to tell you ‘I love you,’ you should know it. Only an idiot wouldn’t know it. You’re not an idiot, are you?”
To have breath fight the tears and snot running down her face and throat, shuddering and terrified that one wrong squeak, look, utterance could be the reason he would launch his fist at her stomach, again, while he roared three centimeters from her face, “Why are you crying? I’m the one that should be crying. You’re the one being the asshole.”
And you know, it’s the antithesis of my belief that you can’t carry (much past your early twenties) character flaws owing to your parents, your rearing, or lack thereof. That one day, you’re grown up enough to just be an asshole or a weak person or just plain broken because that’s who you are, not because you were beaten with a piece of wood or gripped in tiny places with a whole-handed pinch and lifted off the ground. Because a match was lit in your face and a cigarette put out nearby the striking point.
My thoughts and my opinions differ. Because really, one day I should’ve woken up and just known that I’m broken because it’s who I am, not who he was.
But I can’t. Because I’m not advanced enough. Because, God, I still hate him.
