Not enough

For most of my life, like many people, I have felt in many ways not enough. I started reading fashion magazines when I was 11, so not pretty enough was a big one. Followed shortly by not thin enough. In 4th grade I was friends with two other girls. They were more mature, thinking about boys and knowing about puberty and telling dirty jokes. And they were best friends and I was the other friend. I felt I must be lacking something which kept me just outside the inner sanctum of their friendship. When I did get around to boys, I was always worried that I was going to fall short somehow and be discarded.

With Husband, after almost two decades of being together, I was comfortable in the knowledge that for him, I was enough. Pretty enough, thin enough, talented enough, smart enough, nice enough, funny enough. I was confident that we'd be together forever, and that no matter what hardships lay ahead for us, we'd get through them together.

When I found out about Husband's lies and all the infidelity, suddenly, once again, I began to be afraid I was not enough after all.

That's part of the hurt that still lingers. That's part of the fear that's hard to shake. Just maybe if I'd been more worthy, if he'd deemed my more valuable, when he weighed the options in his mind he would have chosen me. My intellectual mind knows the weakness of this thinking. But the part of me that looks to others for validation, the part that never learned how to bestow value upon myself, is afraid that after all these years it was right, and that somehow I'm not enough.

It's not rational, and on better days I can acknowledge my strengths and attributes. But the irrational part of me that is scared and hurt is there too, and suddenly has new evidence to reinforce her fears. Maybe the opportunity here is to help her grow up and join the woman I am now so she doesn't have to be afraid anymore.