I’m not good enough.
That’s the tamest line my inner critic bullied me with this past week.
I’m not good enough.
My eyes glazed over as I stared past my family and through the Christmas tree. Not good enough.
But there was no panic. I knew why my brain was doing that, and I knew it wasn’t personal… wasn’t real.
In some of those moments, I become detached. Untethered, almost. But I know what’s happening. I’m dissociating, and I allow it to happen in short bursts, just to get by.
I know it’s just a bad week. It’s expected. It’s the holidays, and it’s a strange and difficult year for spending them at home.
This too shall pass.
Beneath all the quiet observations, beneath the forgiveness of myself and the surrender to all parts of me, there are younger selves rubbing my back and sharing how proud they are of me. Even as the trumpet of NOT GOOD ENOUGH and STUPID GIRL whines on in the background. The words are relentless but tolerable, because, bit by bit, I am bleeding them of their meaning.
Last night, squeezed into the booth of a pizza parlor with some new friends, I felt that same reassurance, but from outside of me rather than within. Recently, they all agreed it felt as though they’d known me longer than just three months, and I allowed those words into me, untainted by doubt.
Earlier last night, I sat shoulder to shoulder with some of them in a big circle, and, for three minutes, I poured open my heart to a dimmed room of forty people who I knew would hear me. I knew they’d understand why my voice shook, and I knew it would be safe to cry. I knew many would be quietly relating.
It’s still hard for me to describe the emotions rather than just the events, but I tried to. I tried to share how lonely it was—how much grief was inherent—in the things I was working to accept about my family. The ache of detaching myself from the once infinite potential of feeling seen by them. Detaching from a fantasy of warmth and connection that will never be.
I see in myself what they’ve passed down to me. Not just my reactive fear but the traits themselves—traits I would have once denied into oblivion until losing someone important to me.
Now I want to know my shadow intimately. I’m ready to see it. Every ugly curled finger that beckons me toward hurt and self-sabotage…
It’s less than an hour before the next year is ushered in, the year that carries with it my 40th birthday. I started off not afraid of forty at all. Then a little afraid. Then utterly paralyzed…
Now, with the age still not yet upon me, I’ve made my peace with it.
But I view it as a landmark. It feels like the threshold beyond which certain traits might dig in their claws and become intractable—as if I’m approaching a point of no return. I’m not going to allow my past to win like that.
I’ve come a long way, and it feels like the last—and perhaps most difficult—hurdle has just appeared ahead of me in the fog. Beyond it, the track continues but with less of myself in the way. I’m gonna jump this fucking thing.
It’s hard to accept that I have to make sense of it all myself. That the only meaning from the hurts inflicted on me have to come from within me. No one who has hurt me is going to stay and make it all make sense. That’s my job. It’s my job to reach back to the wisdom of the younger versions of me, to those girls who existed before the hurt ballooned… They knew in their core that it was okay to cry.
Just as no one will stay and help make it make sense, no one will be punished either. The person who suffers most deeply at the hands of old hurts is me. I’ve let the years compound my pain by making my interior a safe place for the monsters of my past. Monsters like resentment, self-hatred, and shame…
But they can’t stay here anymore.
I deserved better. I deserved more safety and consistency as my life took shape. That’s a truth that will never go away, and I have to remember to grieve it now and then.
But I can handle it. I’ve proved that to myself this year more than any before it.
I’ve looked bravely into myself and faced the things I don’t like seeing. I’ve surrounded myself swiftly with resources and community. I’ve continued to enjoy deep, loving, and secure connections within long friendships, and I’ve formed new friendships with ease. I’ve devoured books. I’ve filled journals and sketchbooks. And I’ve still found plenty of time to laugh and dance with those I love. And, perhaps most importantly, I’ve given myself the time and permission to rest.
I made a big mistake in September, one that’s jarring when held up to my sheltered history of self-control. But the swiftness with which I was struck by this mistake’s lessons? Humbling. And every decision since then? Marked by clarity and assertion. There’s momentum building underneath my shaky confidence. A foundation I’ve never known.
I realize now that I’ve had an uneasy relationship to hope for most of my life—that I fear hope and all its tempting promises. But to fear hope is to fear life. It’s a fear that has kept me from reaching out and admitting my deepest desires. Without naming and owning those desires, what chance could they ever have of becoming real?
I have to speak those tender wishes into the dark and surrender to what will be.
No. It wasn’t the year I wanted. The year I wanted would have been easy, and this is hard. There are things of six months ago that I wish were still part of my life. Things I grieve during “the crying hours.” Things that would make no sense to others, like the grief I feel when the algorithm no longer shows me cute animal videos. Or the grief brought on by a cypress tree, or belly button lint, or a sunflower seed…
But one thing I would not trade for six months ago is me.
I’m ragged this week. Emotionally exhausted. But I’m accepting and forgiving of that. And the overarching story of the last few months remains one of increasing trust in myself. I have a glow on some days that I haven’t seen in a long time… maybe not since I was a kid. I just get stronger and stronger inside and out. There’s a nascent orb of self-love warming my chest.
It wasn’t the year I wanted, but it was the year I needed.
Thanks to all who were there.
11:58pm 12.31.24