On Not Being Enough

Or, "all of my fears are completely justifiable and I hate it".

I have a grand total of four conscious fears - heights (I am too tall for that problem and yet--), small spaces (mostly elevators but someone nearly accidentally shut me into a dark supply closet at work a few months ago and that's the most traumatic thing that's happened to me all year), getting hit by a car in the parking lot at work (very specific I know but I swear to god, that parking lot is the convergence of every bad driver in the Tri-State and I do not want to die there), aaaand never being good enough for anyone. There's a pattern here, I swear. Heights - the defining moment was on a vacation to Washington D.C. the summer I turned fifteen, in the Washington Monument because I swear that thing was designed to help people consciously realise their fears. Small spaces - series of things, the closet incident at work being the most recent (I'm not that tiny and unnoticeable, and the other person did apologize, but still). Getting hit by a car in the parking lot at work - people around here can't fricking drive, I have seen less idiots in locations that are supposedly hell in that regard (Chicago suburbs, totally overrated as far as asshole drivers), and yet for some reason it is just that one particular parking lot where I've nearly gotten hit on multiple occasions. Never being good enough for anyone... well, that's a bit more complicated.

I'm pretty sure the origin of this fear is that my dad comes from a long line of perfectionists. As far as we know, this is a genetic defect, which means I'm safe because being adopted does have a few perks, but... yeah. Not only that, but even the family members who don't have that personality flaw are musically gifted. And, to top that off, my dad has a comparatively tame version of what I've come to refer to as Military Personality Type. (My mom and I didn't know this was the tame version until I was about 14, but that is another post.) Military Personality Type is... well, if you don't know someone who has it, I can't really explain it to you but I swear it's a thing. And sufficient to say, that combination of personality traits was not exactly the best thing for a young kid to grow up around. I mean, my dad's a decent person. I learned my driving habits and my full repertoire of profanity from him (often at the same time), and he genuinely tries. Just... not a good pressurey situation. But, as with everything else in my life, it got worse when I turned 14.

Switching homeschool groups based on location is probably the weirdest thing my mother has ever done, and that includes the time when I was nine and what was supposed to be a ten-minute drive home turned into an hour-and-a-half detour because Mom made one wrong turn, didn't know she'd made a wrong turn, and by the time we did figure this out, we were a county north of where we'd started. For those of you who don't know, Hamilton County is pretty big, so this was an accomplishment. This led to my parents getting cell phones for Christmas that year, and a few years later we got a GPS with my dad's airline miles (which is another story, srsly), and... yeah. Rambling. Sufficient to say, this one little decision five years later had about the same fallout - one little mistake leading to a bunch of weird, unexpected, and generally awful consequences. Except that this time, not for the person who made said decision.

The amount of elitists one runs into in homeschool circles is amazing. I did speech comp for three years - trust me on this, you will never find a higher concentration of pretentious teenagers who are going to get hit hard by the normal world in a couple of years and deserve every bit of that. But speech comp, at least, mostly involved people who could learn from their mistakes. The local co-op we were involved in? Not so much. I still know all of the girls of my era, and I at least keep tabs on the boys via Facebook (it's amusing okay?), and they have all just intensified from where they were in high school. More often than not, this is not a compliment.

So what does this have to do with my insecurities, you ask? Very simple - because nothing will ruin a teenage girl like primarily being around other teenage girls who are all very good at something she is not good at. In this case, unsurprisingly, that thing was music. I cannot play an instrument. Several rounds of piano lessons were attempted over the years, and I tried clarinet for about a year until orthodontia killswitched that idea. The other girls of my era either played multiple instruments or just did one but were exceptionally good at it to compensate. Presumably, I could've compensated for this if my singing voice was good, but that also did not happen. I am very solidly an alto. For those of you who are not musically inclined, religious music is not written for altos. Choir music is definitely not written for altos. Take, say, "Carol Of The Bells" - let's use that example because I've had that on the brain lately (mainly because of a TV ep I watched a few weeks ago that used it interestingly, but that is not a story I am posting here) and because it's a fairly simple four-part song. (Also, because it's a yearly ritual in the community choir I was in.) The sopranos and the tenors get the interesting parts, as per usual. The basses do what they always do, for better or for worse. The altos... are just there. Completely normal. And what were the rest of the girls of my era? Second sopranos. Aka, y'know, the most obnoxious group in any choir. Just... trust me.

And here's the thing - nobody ever told me I wasn't good enough. They didn't need to. It was implied in ways more damaging than words could ever be.

It was implied in all of the activities I was "accidentally" left out of in high school.

It was implied in my mother's constant insecurities about the fact that I wasn't boy-crazy (the fact that she knew darn well what boys I knew and still thought it was weird I wasn't flinging myself at anyone remains one of the great mysteries of my teenage years).

It was implied in all the condescending comments whenever I said that I didn't want to get married or have kids (this has changed but the scars remain).

It was implied in all of the people who told me I'd prolly get married young as cosmic payback for everything (yet here I am, no nearer to that fate than I was five years ago when they thought it was so cute).

It's been implied in all of the times my mother has had to be "creative" when talking with her friends about what everyone's adult children are up to, because "she quit college and works in a shop and is supposedly working on several novels" just doesn't sound acceptable.

No one ever had to tell me I was good enough. I just knew. And at this point, it's in my blood.

I haven't had a lot of genuine friendships and I dunno how to change that. I've never been in functional reciprocated love. But someday these will change. Someday I will be good enough. And someday, someday I will stick it to everyone who ever made me think I wasn't. It's going to be a journey, but so help me, I will get there. I have to. It's either that or death, and I'm not at the cute age to be a tragedy.