I had an online date with an online friend yesterday.
She shared with me how she cannot get over her ex, and soon we realized that at the core is the pain of not being chosen. A pattern that started in early childhood, when her mother was not present, continued in other relationships, where she usually felt like an outsider, not really belonging to the group. This is also showing up in her romantic relationships, where when she finally warms up to somebody who wants to be with her, they cool down. When she shares her desire for commitment, they step back. And even if she is the one who ends the relationship, it still hurts her that they don’t step up.
And then she asked me about me. How is my business, how’s school? (I enrolled in college last year. At 33, I am the oldest in my class.)
I told her how the day before, my husband and I visited a friend of his, and he fully roasted me for being 34 and going to school. I laughed hard at myself because his delivery was impeccable. He could totally be a comedian. But when I went to bed, I couldn’t sleep. I felt like a total loser.
“Oh, so that’s your thing,” she said. Yep, that’s my thing.
On this blog of mine (I started blogging at almost 17, which was 17 years ago), I have shared so many of my ups and downs over the years. But somewhere along the way, I stopped sharing my downs.
There were several reasons for that.
I sometimes felt misunderstood. As though the message I was conveying, which felt so pure to me, somehow missed the mark. And it was hard for me to take probably well-meaning advice when I didn’t ask for it. If I could go back in time, I would tell myself that just as I share my posts because they hold significance to me, people commenting on my posts share what holds significance to them. Their comments weren’t necessarily that much about me as they were about themselves. Unless I got triggered, in which case, there was probably something for me to learn there too.
I was also afraid of sounding like a victim. Healing from burnout took way longer than I expected, and when I felt like I was back in the game, something would come up and knock me down again. I was afraid of sounding victimish and like I was just making excuses all the time. It always felt like there was another layer to heal, and then I would finally be able to share my success story.
And I desperately needed that success story.
I mean, if you want to inspire others to do what they love, you’d better have a success story.
I have so deeply wanted a successful career in coaching. It’s my biggest joy to have those deep conversations with people. They are pure beauty, even when they share their scars and reveal to me pieces of themselves they see as unlovable.
But how to market that? “Hey, see me as your (online) friend for hire. You need someone who listens attentively when you share, who will analyse what’s going on and help you see the bigger picture, plus hold you accountable to actually take action on your insights and change your life for the better. We will meet weekly, and this is your time to take up space. Our sessions are all about you and your (life and business) goals. You are in good hands, as I am a natural talent and am constantly working on evolving my coaching skills.”
I mean, that’s quite good, actually.
But I felt like I needed a real success story. Something along the lines of, “I achieved X in super short X amount of time after I changed that one thing.” With the clear message that you can too.
I stopped sharing my ups as well. It felt like they would come across as me trying to paint a colorful picture, while it was obvious to everyone that my life was gray. Like I was grasping for air while drowning, trying to convince people with my wins that I was breathing with full lungs.
Although I wanted to be a writer since I learned how to read, I stopped telling my stories because I felt like my ups were too insignificant for the majority of people to see them as something they would aspire to, and my downs were too heavy and dark to share until I fully processed them and could bring a neatly packaged “Here’s how you can move through it too.”
I didn’t want to become known as someone who talks about burnout all the time. Or cPTSD, or being an ACOA. I also felt like I lacked the credibility to speak on these topics since I didn’t delve into all the academic research on all aspects of them. My process of having lived experiences, searching for solutions for myself, and then sharing what helped me seemed like it was always lacking proof, data, theory, knowledge, or research.
And I also didn’t want to box myself into being a person that people would expect me to be based on what I shared. But then I boxed myself into a box I couldn’t get out of, because by not sharing myself with the world, through the written or spoken word, I closed myself into that box. I didn’t want to become someone people would pity, but I ended up getting exactly that.
“You are lucky because you take everything so positively,” that friend of my husband said.
“It appears that way on the outside, but if it were true, I wouldn’t be that 34-year-old going back to school.”
A friend of my brother visited my mother a few weeks ago, while my husband and I had just come there to cut grass. We spoke about my brother, and he said of him, “He took on every word someone said to him.” Meaning that he let everything other people said affect him.
It was such an interesting choice of words. Taking on words.
I know the shame spiral that comes with taking on the words of others and internalizing them all too well.
Constantly not feeling enough. And there’s always the next thing I must heal, must achieve, must get to, or must let go of, so I can finally take up space at the table with the grown-ups. Without feeling like I’m pretending to be one of them, and everyone is just playing along, while we all know I don’t fit in.
And the majority of us have that one area where we are not hitting our goals. Where we aren’t where we think we’re supposed to be by our age. Where we aren’t getting what we really want. I for sure thought I’d be a millionaire by now. A stellar success in my business. If you told 20-year-old me that she’d be living in the same house as her mother-in-law at 34, she wouldn’t believe you.
The majority of us have an area where we feel like we’re trying our best but don’t succeed. A pain point. Where we feel like losers. Where we feel like we screw up despite our best intentions. Or where we feel sad because they don’t choose us.
We can all compare our lives to the lives of others and find something where we are falling short and beat ourselves up about it. Or we can think of six people who have it worse than us and feel good about ourselves, as my husband’s friend said he does. “And I’m not saying you’re among those six people,” he added. 🤣
When we play the comparison game, we feel envy, as though those who have it better somehow don’t deserve it, like they have it easy, and luck (or privilege) is on their side, while those who have it worse just weren’t willing to put in as much work as we did.
Or we feel like lazy losers because we are not living up to our potential. Because we aren’t able to fully embody that version of ourselves that has it all.
We get little kicks of pleasure with schadenfreude and a sense of safety, tinged with frustration, in our little boxes.
Oh, how beautifully human we are.
And we won’t stop comparing. People have been playing status games forever, and we won’t stop doing it. And even if you don’t want to play, you’ll get some judgment from those who do.
But in the end, it’s your life. You are the one with whom you live your whole life. You know why you are where you are, and whether you like it there or not. You know what you need to change if you want things to be different. You know you can tell your story from the perspective of a loser or a winner.
If you want to tell it that way at all.
Because in a world where we divide people into winners and losers, we are all at a loss.
We all lack the connection we really want.
With Love,
