Not good enough

There’s so much going on in the world right now, I can barely keep up. It’s crazy because with the latest pandemic it feels like my personal life has been put on pause, yet, the world has never been more eventful. Wildfires, viruses, riots and we just barely made it to June.

Besides all that is going down right now in the world outside, the real reason I’m here is to finish off the topic that I have started in my previous blog about what’s going on in the world within me - as usual. I don’t know how much you remember as it was over a month ago, but I started to share a piece of my childhood and what it was like growing up with an abusive father. In this blog, I’m trying to get to the bottom of how it has affected my personality and my relationships.

Having a caregiver who doesn’t really give any care, and is constantly telling you that you’re worthless, it’s something that will mess with your head, whether you acknowledge it or not. Now that I’m starting to connect the dots, I see why I can’t manage to get into a healthy relationship. The answer is simple: I always choose wrong. If I had to find one similarity in all my past lovers it would be this. They all said: “I’m not looking for a relationship right now.” All of them.

If a guy whom I’m still deciding whether I like or not says these words to me, they work just like magic on me. I immediately leech onto it and I become obsessed with him. The rest of the world stops existing to me, and he becomes my “project”, my mission, my priority. Nothing matters more than changing his mind. But why? Why would I wanna be with someone who doesn’t wanna be with me? Who constantly makes me feel like I’m not good enough.

Here’s where things get messed up in my head. It’s not that I’m not good enough. I’m taking things too personally. He’s just simply not at that point of his life where he wants to be committed to anybody really. He wants to mess around, he’s been talking to multiple women, and in his life, I’m just one of the many, it’s nothing personal. But when someone says “I’m not looking for a relationship right now.” this is what I really hear; ‘I’m not sure you’re good enough for me’.

Honestly, at this point it feels like I’m holding onto this ‘I’m not good enough’ notion very strongly, otherwise, why would I keep choosing it over and over again. Why would anyone wanna feel that way? Why? Because it’s a familiar feeling. It’s crazy I know. Do you remember the song that goes: “You can be addicted to a certain kind of sadness.”? It’s fucking true! That part of my brain that leeches onto the emotionally unavailable one doesn’t know if it’s “good” or “bad”. All it knows that it’s familiar. And the brain loves familiarity. It knows how to respond to it. It knows how to handle it. It knows what to expect. That’s why it’s so hard to break habits even if we understand that they’re bad for us.

But my dad is really the only person that was emotionally unavailable. Everyone else in my family has been very much loving and supportive. Even male figures. I have a great relationship with my brothers and uncles. How could that one person affect me so much? Because that one person’s love and support was something I was counting on as a child, and because I was never getting it, it became something I’m chasing until this very day. Deep down I still have that little girl in me who’s looking for daddy’s acceptance, only this time I’m looking for it in my partner. So when I meet someone I might like and he says “I’m not looking for a relationship”, I feel the urge to change his mind. I need to prove to him that I am somebody that’s worthy. It’s like I’m looking for the same issue I had with my dad and I’m desperately trying to fix it in someone else. How irrational and stupid that is? Yet, I wouldn’t stop doing it. Who knows what would happen if I did manage to change his mind and he’d fall in love with me. Maybe I would be over him immediately. Maybe, I’d finally feel redeemed and stayed, I honestly don’t know as it never happened before.

In the last blog, I didn’t share the stories in which my dad physically hurt me. You know why? Because they don’t matter. Physical bruises heal quickly and easily. But the emotional ones, man, you can never get rid of them. The ego is a very fragile mirror that once brakes, no matter how much you try to put the pieces back together, you’ll always see the cracks on it.

As I said a million times before, we can’t control other people’s behaviour. We only have power over how we choose to react to it. Even if my dad will never accept me the way I am, it shouldn’t matter. It’s not his life. It’s mine. I can still choose to accept me. To love me and to look after me. I see the good in the bad and the way he’s been with me actually had a lot of good outcomes as well. I’ve become a lot more empathetic person, and now I see how important it is to love and support the people in my life. I also think that the reason why I’m always learning and acquiring new skills is because I need to prove to MYSELF that I am capable and smart enough to do whatever my heart desires. As a result now I speak English, play multiple instruments, draw and paint, do photography, edit videos and be as creative as I wanna be. I work in the field I’m passionate about. Think whatever you want but I’m proud of my accomplishments and it’s all because I needed to prove the voice saying; “you’re not good enough” wrong in my whole life. Fuck you voice! Yes, I am!

But acquiring new skills only depends on me. If I’m good enough for someone else that’s out of my control, so when it comes to my love life, there are two things I can do at this point. I can keep fucking with fuckboys, but then I need to get my expectations straight. Just because I’ve got a guy I’m fucking with, it doesn’t mean we’re in a relationship, neither that we ever will be. I have to stop thinking that one day I’m gonna make him fall in love with me and we’re gonna be a couple, so I have to be loyal to him. No. All I can know for sure that we’re not a couple now and I can’t expect anything stable from him. I also have to keep in mind that if I keep choosing these guys I can say goodbye to my vision of having a family one day. Which is fine. Not everybody has to have a family on their own, but I need to have a serious conversation with myself whether parenthood is something I actively want to pursue or it’s something I can live without. Because one thing is for sure, I wouldn’t start a family with a fuckboy. If that’s what I want, I need a grown ass man who’s husband material and has his priorities straight and here comes my other option. I can stop being so compulsive over fuckboys and start making conscious decisions by choosing guys who say things like; “I want you to be my girlfriend.” Whatever I end up doing, until I hear that sentence and I agree to it, I AM SINGLE and I can date and talk to whoever I want.

There’s one thing I need to keep in mind along the way; I am already good enough and I am worthy of love.