To All The Women Who Are Always Not Good Enough

by Sejal Parikh · September 10, 2015

For a long time, I stood in the not good enough abyss, looking up at the gigantic mountain from which the one too good for me threw me down!

I’d made the climb with the one I loved and right before I could stand at the peak, hand-in-hand with the one I never let go off, to see what lay beyond on the other side, I was pushed.

Because I was not good enough.

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For a long time, I wondered why.

Why was I not good enough?

What was I doing wrong?

What could I do differently to be good enough?

And for a long time, I had no answers!

Loving with all I had, I had believed, was good enough.

Apparently, it wasn’t.

One nippy wintry night, as I slipped out of work in an all-black attire, vanishing into the night as the city lights went off to sleep, someone in the shadows called out to me. Scared as I was, of the time that my watch showed and the eerie stillness of the night, I turned to find a familiar face flashing an excited smile!

‘Adi, what are you doing here?’ I managed, from within his tight embrace.

‘Come to see my lost star, from that corner of space you left years ago,’ he managed with good-hearted glee and a gaze that pierced through my eyes to look deep within my soul. I felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the chill outside!

I called out to a cab to break free from the spell of his gaze.

But he caught on with me, the next day and the next and next until…

‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked, tired of visiting the lifeless planet I was, instead of beholding the shining star he always thought I was.

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‘I am not good enough,’ I spat, in partial resignation and partial gloom. And the next couple of hours were spent revisiting the tomb where my heart lay. And just when my tears turned to a ceasing drizzle, he leaned in and whispered, ‘You are as good as you believe you are,’ and slid away!

For a long time afterward, my brain kept replaying Adi’s words, as if they had some sort of nascent power to bring alive something in my dead heart. I tried to piece together my broken love story with whatever of my self-worth I believed I had alongside Adi’s words, but it didn’t make sense.

And then, one day, it did…

Suggested read: Why none of us need the forever love…

III

I was in a relationship with someone I loved, someone I believed to be so GOOD that I allowed him to dwarf my own worth – so much so that I ended up believing and convincing myself that I was not good enough for HIM. In doing that, I allowed him to make me the mirror where he’d see himself as infinite times better than myself and show me the reflection too!

And all the while, I forgot one important relationship – with someone I didn’t recall loving – never enough to embrace the flaws, the quirks or even shortcomings. This someone, I believed, was not good enough for me. This someone was me!

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I never brought myself to love myself first and be happy in my skin – that it was easy for someone else rooted with a myriad insecurities and fears of his own to break through my own and project his own feelings of diminished self-worth onto me to feel GOOD ENOUGH!

By entering a relationship (I dreamt of being strong enough for a lifetime) from a point of weakness, I sent my radar of self-worth off-kilter and let it catch whatever misguided frequency floated about it in the air around.

And I wasn’t alone.

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There were other types of not good enough women around me – all pushed off the peak, before the feeling of having reached there had sunk in. Take for instance, my cousin who happens to become a different person whenever a certain specimen of the male species seems to show some interest in her. She starts to smile, twirl her hair, notch up the flirtation flame to a hundred degrees, and seems intent on the object of her attention like a neurosurgeon operating – cut off from friends and family!

Her oblivion of all else is so poignant that even if her target were a seasoned criminal and would assert as much, she’d pop the ‘shut up, you are so funny’ line, with a suggestive touch on the arm!

Wondering why?

To fit the bill of what these men would deem ‘good enough.’

Most women are unable to bear the sting of not being good enough and carry the poison in their veins for months, even years, because they internalize their worth as shown to them by the barometer that reads someone else’s bidding!

So, what is the antidote?

Self-love!

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You were born good enough. And you will grow into as ‘good enough’ as you can be. That’s all you have to be – unapologetically, fiercely, authentically you.

When you enter any place (a relationship or anything else) from a place of radical self-love – where you accept your flaws, own them, and strive to be the best version of you you can be, every single day – you choose to protect yourself, to care for yourself, and more than anything, BE yourself – as you are.

You also demand that you be taken such, because you are good enough, as you are. And anybody who thinks otherwise, is probably not ‘good enough’ for YOU.

Image source: Google, copyright-free image under Creative Commons License

Like Adi said, ‘you are as good as you believe you are,’ I have learnt the lesson the hard way. But to all the lovely ladies who feel they aren’t good enough or are being told so and can still be spared some heartache, know this:

“If you think you are beaten, you are;

If you think you dare not, you don’t.

If you’d like to win, but think you can’t,

It’s almost certain that you won’t.

If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost.

For out in the world we find,

Success begins with a fellow’s will. It’s all in his state of mind.

If you think you’re outclassed, you are:

You’ve got to think high to rise.

You’ve got to be sure of yourself before you’ll ever win the prize.

Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man.

But sooner or later the man who wins is the man who thinks he can.”

-Napoleon Hill, Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude

In life, your parents, your sibling, your lover, your spouse, or worse, your children, may make you feel worthless in your roles with them. But remember lovelies, you are not defined by who you are to them but who you are to yourself.

So build that relationship, allow it to grow, and sustain it to fruition, so much so that you KNOW and let it be known that you are good enough just as you are.

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Coz like I already said, that’s all you have ever got to be!

Lots of Love,

A good enough woman

P. S.: Thanks Adi. Your star has learnt not to dim its light, water it down or stow it away. And even if the sky comes falling down, you will see a brilliant and blazing meteor shower the universe can find a home in!

Featured image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License

Summary