This Is Me Facing My Biggest Fear Of Not Being Good Enough
Do you ever wake up in the morning with a heavy feeling in your chest?
Do you ever find yourself spaced out and unsure of your next move?
Perhaps you even question yourself and all of your choices up until this point in your life.
I know I do.
The concept of fear is something that we all hold within us; however, as we grow up, we are told that our fears are not important and we should just get over them.
If only it were that simple.
Just like most women, I have had my heartbroken. I understand what it feels like to be let down, cheated on, and lied to.
I remember so clearly standing in the hallway, staring down at my phone, and coming across a picture of the boy I loved, arm in arm with a girl who wasn’t me. I felt my eyes fill with tears, not tears of anger, but tears of absolute humility. I remember feeling as though my heart had been ripped open and torn out of my chest while everyone around me looked and laughed.
I will never forget the genuine sadness I felt at that very moment. It was as though all I had ever known about myself and the world around me was all a lie. It didn’t matter how many amazing things there were about me to be grateful for. All that mattered at that moment in time is I was lonely.
That is when my biggest fear was born. The feeling of not being good enough. It is daunting, it is scary, and it is heartbreaking.
I have always considered myself a strong person but, the power that this fear has over me is something that I cannot explain.
As a girl in her twenties, I am filled with goals and ambitions. I have things that I want to achieve, and I know I can succeed. I am kind, resilient, educated, funny and outgoing. But I find that these fears often get the better of me and act as barriers in my life.
It angers me to think that I was once a fearless woman. All it took was one boy to plant a toxic seed in my body filled with self-doubt for that all to come crashing down. I now worry daily that I will never be good enough for anybody. I fear that I will spend my life alone as I am incapable of love.
I throw away potentially great relationships in fear of feeling those terrible feelings again. I live with a cloud of anxiety hanging over my head all because of one bad experience.
From that moment in the hallway, I made a promise that I would never allow myself to be heartbroken again. It was from that moment that my ability to be vulnerable came to a complete stop. I turned off the switch in my heart, locked it, and threw away the key, and now live in a fear that no guy will ever be able to find that key and share with me the beauty of love.
It was that day that I really let myself down. On that day, at that moment, I allowed the fear to eat me alive. I gave it a free pass to win its battle against me. I developed an unhealthy relationship with love and with myself.
I know in myself that no guy will ever find the key because that key belongs to me.
I have realized over time that the thought process I once had is detrimental to my mental health and self-worth. I stopped valuing myself the moment I decided to put my happiness in the hands of others. Ultimately, until I opened the door for myself and grew a love for me, I was never truly happy.
So now here I am, trying to rebuild my views on what a healthy love should look like and feel like.
I am working hard to overcome the fear of not being good enough because it is not true. I am working on opening my heart and sharing my vulnerabilities with the world, or at least some of it. I am accepting myself and focusing on all the good in my life.
One person gets to decide if I am worth it, and I can tell you that that person is not him or any other boy for that matter. The one person who decides if I am good enough is me.
And today, and every day, I’m choosing her.