people-mirrors

I have always been able to walk on my own path. In fact, I liked being the one doing my own thing. I was the kid who was usually doing something alone, in my room. Painting a picture, learning a song on the piano, singing to karaoke YouTube videos. I didn't mind being the kid who was a little different or a little weird. I never thought about where I was supposed to be at that point in life. I didn't care who liked me and who didn't.

It wasn’t until adulthood, when life is all about being alone, that I really started to become insecure about almost everything.

lovers

The tiktok tarot card readers tells me you’re coming back. That you just needed a sec before we could be truly in love but I should wait for a text from you. I picked the flower petals all the way down and got “loves me not” but for some reason I felt like it was wrong. You don’t like my Instagram pictures anymore. There’s a new girl, I think her name starts with a J, and she’ll be the next me until someone else comes along. She will be the girl who comments inside jokes on your pics, and I will be the one whose stomach hurts when she sees them.

You know when you put two wrong sides of a magnet together and they resist no matter how hard you push? That’s me & love. It’s so close. It’s just never the right time. Wrong person. Different phases of life. Different goals. Two red flags and one gaping ick. Picked someone else. Not ready yet. Wish you lived closer. I’m busy with work. You’re busy with being busy. My mental health is … I’ll know you in another life. Someone’s going to love you better than I can.

I’ve heard all the things.

I’m starting to think my therapist knows it’s a me problem and she’s not telling me. I’m starting to think I’m a big fat narcissist who can’t see the personality flaws glaring out into everyone’s way. I’m starting to think if I was a little more like this one girl that I’d have way better odds at doing love things.

How many times can people show you you’re unlovable before you believe that you are?

bffls

I cannot actually write this without sobbing.

I never ever ever understood what people meant when they said “not everybody has to like you.” I know. I get it. I hear the words and I think, you’re right, the person who watched me fall off the sidewalk in Amsterdam probably has an opinion about me but I couldn’t care less. But what’s really hard to grasp is that even people who used to like you, love you even, don’t have to like you now.

Big breath.

I have spent an insurmountable amount of time trying to comprehend why we grow out of friendships, why people stop talking to each other, why things change and fizzle out. I have spent more time than not wondering how I could be better so all the people I’ve loved and will love won’t ever leave me.

I’ve spent nights laying up looking through Instagram wishing they still commented on my pictures, wishing I would see their name pop up for a FaceTime call, a text wondering what days I’d be home for Christmas. I’ve made lists, several actually, about all the reasons people may not like me and how I can fix them. I’ve hated myself for forgetting to act good and right and thinking that was the last straw for them.

I’ve modelled after my favourite best friends, and my sister, and celebrities and influencers that other people love and wondered why I wasn’t getting the same response. I’ve been talkative about my problems but felt like a whiner and then I shut up about them but then people feel like I’m mad at them and shutting them out. I’ve asked everyone I’ve ever known if I was annoying or too loud at the restaurant, if I said something stupid to that guy last night after I had a drink. I’ve rewritten texts, added the perfect smiley heart emojis to make sure the tone comes across and lots of !!! To make sure they know I’m excited! And happy! And going! With! The! Flow!

And after all this, I lay in bed at night and wonder still why girls I talked about my future wedding with might not even be there at this rate. Why boys deleted me on Snapchat. Why she unfollowed. Why I’m blocked. Why she thinks I would kiss her boyfriend. Why they don’t follow up with me anymore. Why she didn’t wish me a happy birthday.

work

One thing I know for certain is I can work hard. I can do absolutely anything without help or guidance, and I can be good at it, too.

There was a day in the pouring down rain of an almost-snowy winter where my dad and I changed my tires from summer to winter. He was adamant I know how to do it and I was adamant that I was freezing cold and hungry. There were choice words exchanged and a little yelling, but I learned nonetheless. And I’ve approached everything work-related from that standpoint ever since.

I can be good at anything. And not only that, but I can always be doing better. And be doing more. And working harder, and longer. And I can do it in freezing rain.

Some days, though, I can’t help but think I’ll never get “there”. I’ll never be making enough money, or save up for a house, never be a manager, let alone a manager’s manager. I think to myself about how replaceable I am.

Boomers are going to be in the comments telling me to give it sixty years or whatever they may but it’s not that. It’s just hard to see people with the same skills and qualities and age and drive that I have be doing better or doing more than me while I do what I do.

other people

After all this thinking (which my mind is just so, so good at), I try to remind myself that most people have all these feelings and more. Most people wonder why they’re not good enough, or what they did wrong. Most people make terrible mistakes they wish they could take back, most people cry about things you’ve also cried about.

And sometimes other people look at you and make whatever’s going on in their head your fault.

Sometimes, you’re not a person to them. You’re a mirror. They see parts of themselves in you. In the regular things you do every day. And instead of looking inward, they tell you to be better. They tell you you hurt their feelings. They tell you you were wrong. But in reality (I know it’s hard to believe sometimes), they’re not looking at you, they’re looking at themselves in you.

This is insecurity.

I know a lot about insecurity. That’s how I know about people being mirrors. Because I see them everywhere I am, and in everything I do. I am constantly reminded about all the things I don’t like about myself, and I’m constantly battling the urge not to freak out at everyone who shows those qualities off to me.

If reading this gives you one thing, let it be that you are mostly good, and always worthy. You are not all bad, comprised of terrible traits. You are lovely and lovable. You have friends that love you. And you have a presence in the world that would be largely empty if you were not exactly who you are right now. Nobody decides what hurts you, embarrasses you, or defines you besides you. 

People will leave you, sometimes they will leave you like a trip to the grocery store for eggs: with the lights on, oven preheating, and tv humming in the living room - they will leave you like they never left. 

You will write people in and out of the will of your young life. You will imagine several different bridesmaids. You will meet girls who have flawless skin and bone structure handed down by god himself. You could always be doing better and working harder, planning more, going the extra mile.

Right now, though, you are just one small person with a big heart and a heavy head and it’s okay if you need to just sit with things and think about them a bit before you go telling yourself you’re not worth all the love in the world. You are. And then some.