On being (or not being) enough

I have two favorite quotes, both by women I consider to have been strong, and beautiful, and powerful. One, which I have tattooed on my back, is this:

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't." -- Eleanor Roosevelt

The other is this:

"You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody." -- Maya Angelou

You see, I have always struggled with seeking approval and feeling inadequate. It started when I was young, and it has become a cycle in all kinds of relationships my entire life. It goes like this: I care about someone, so I seek his/her approval. I fail in one way or the other at getting full approval. I despair, feeling I will never be enough. Sometimes I try harder, and other times I give up.

This happens even with myself. I care about myself, so I seek my own approval. I fail by disappointing myself. I despair, feeling that I will never be what I want to be. Sometimes I try harder, and other times I give up.

***

My first specific memory of feeling this way dates back to the first or second grade. I had just won a writing competition and had fallen in love with the art of writing. I was so excited that finally my parents could be proud of me. I was doing something well.

I decided to write a letter to my grandparents. My dad wanted to read it before mailing it to them. As he read, he became increasingly upset. I didn't know what I had done wrong. I was sharing my gift of writing with them, and nothing I said had been negative.

"Do you even know how to use a comma?" He asked. I don't remember my response. I may not have responded at all. He continued by saying something like, "This is the worst, most ungrammatical, letter I've ever seen. Your grandparents are going to think you are stupid. They're going to think I didn't teach you right. This is an embarrassment."

Embarrassment. I remember that word well. It was used often to describe me throughout my childhood. I was never enough.

I wasn't enough for my father.

***

Another time, the pastor at my church told me I wasn't enough. I was probably around 6 or 7. My family attended a Seventh Day Adventist church at the time, and we had a Sabbath School talent show coming up. I had signed up to do a ballet performance.

After children's group one Wednesday evening, the pastor pulled me aside. He said something like this: "I see you have signed up to dance in the children's talent show. We don't dance in this church. It leads to sin." He reminded me of prophet Ellen White's teaching that "The blessing of God would not be invoked upon the hour spent at the theater or in the dance."

I whipped out my Bible so fast, turning to Psalm 149, one of my favorite parts of the Bible. I showed the pastor the verse that instructs, "Let them praise his name in the dance: let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp."

He paid my protests no heed. Instead, the pastor reminded me, once again, that "true Christians" don't give into worldly activities such as dance, and that following this path would lead to my annihilation in the end times. (In other words, the SDA version of Hell.)

I wasn't enough for the church.

***

Last night, I went to a bar with the attorneys and other legal interns from work. In a conversation between myself, another legal intern, and an attorney, the other intern brought up that I have been married and divorced. I'm 24.

The attorney wanted to know what my rush was? Why did I get married? Why didn't I just live with my ex and wait until we were in our thirties to get married? Was I afraid of living in sin? When I admitted that I still, even post-divorce, don't see anything inherently wrong with marrying in one's twenties, questions continued: Why would I rush again? Why can't I just live with a significant other and wait until I'm older to get married? Don't I know that people change when they turn thirty? Am I still afraid of living in sin? Am I not progressive now?

The conversation touched on some of my deepest insecurities. Not smart enough in the world's eyes: An intelligent person would have seen the divorce statistics and waited to get married. Not good enough in the church's eyes: A pious person wouldn't have gotten divorced, and wouldn't have "lived in sin."

I'm not enough for my career field.

***

These feelings of inadequacy continue today. It's why I struggle to feel like I fit in at school, even though I make good grades. It's why I struggle to feel like I fit in at church, even if I believe. It's why I continue to seek my dad's approval, my grandparents' approval, my friends' approval, my mom's approval, the world's approval.

Part of me wants to rebel against all these pressures, to just say, "Screw it! I don't need your blessing!" But part of me can't stop hoping that others--especially the people and the institutions that are important to me--will love and accept me.

These quotes, even when I don't wholly believe them, remind me that people will never fully approve of me. I will never please everyone, and I often won't even please myself. But that doesn't mean I'm not enough. And that doesn't mean I'm not worthy. Right?

Parsing positions on marriage

I can't explain why, but the topic of marriage has come up often lately, especially at the office. Perhaps it's because a few co-workers recently found out that I am divorced, and once people find out I'm a 24-year-old divorcee, they tend to become deeply curious about my views on marriage. Or perhaps a few of my closer co-workers know that I'm in a new relationship, and they think it's so fascinating that my relationship is already serious this early. Or maybe it's because they found out I'm Christian, and they want to figure out how I'm a Christian who also works at the ACLU: What are my views on social issues?

I don't know why it keeps coming up, but it does. I've been fielding a lot of questions lately.

Why did you get married in your at 20? Didn't you know the statistics on divorce in young marriages?

How could anyone possibly thinking living together before marriage is anything but normal? Why do people choose to abstain from sex before marriage? You need to do these things to "test out" the marriage before making the commitment.

You really mean that you would get married again before you're 30?! Didn't you learn the first time?

I don't understand why people are so anti-divorce. If a couple is unhappy, let them divorce!

Let me be clear. I honestly don't completely disagree with some of these sentiments, though I majorly disagree with what I believe to be the foundations upon which these assertions are based, if that makes any sense.

See, the difference here is in our ideas of what marriage is meant to do and what it is meant to look like. If marriage exists primarily for the happiness of the individuals involved, then it makes sense to see divorce statistics and at least pause, questioning whether the happiness will last. It makes sense to take a "test drive" by living together and having sex, and to end things if those don't go well. It makes sense to make hard and fast rules about the age at which one will get married based on statistical likelihood of continued happiness. It makes sense to make divorce easy.

But if we look at marriages and relationships as living, breathing, organisms with a lifetime commitment (as I do), then we come out with a very different assessment indeed. If we believe, as I do, that it simply won't always be happy, that sometimes the organism will get sick, but that the purpose of marriage is to provide familial stability through perseverance and hard work, then we won't be scared by statistics. We won't necessarily form rules about when to enter into the challenge based on social scientific data that can't account for things like willingness to commit in an individual relationship. We won't see "test driving" as necessary (even if we do it anyway), because we will make it work either way. We will cringe at divorce (even perhaps while believing, as I do, that divorce is an unfortunate reality that shouldn't be a basis of judgment and shouldn't be legally difficult).

If we believe that marriages primarily exist for the rearing of children and the stability of communities, we are likely to have a different assessment of these issues. If we believe--as this survey showed many millennials do--that commitment is temporal,  another assessment would result.

I happened upon this article today, which discusses the author's religious perspective on these issues. In it, the author says:

At the end of the day, marriage is not about me, it’s about we. It’s about learning to choose another person over ourselves—because by choosing them, we are choosing to become greater in humility, strength, forgiveness and love. Marriage isn’t about becoming happier. It’s about becoming better.

And while I don't think the entirety of the article is especially well-written, and while I think that we have to at least have some consideration of individual happiness (lest we encourage people to stay in unsafe or emotionally unhealthy situations such as, say, abusive marriages), I think the above point is eloquently stated. In my view, marriage isn't about me. It's about the commitment I'm making to choose someone every. single. day. (even they days when I genuinely think that person sucks).

That's why I got married when I was 20. I was ready to choose my ex-husband for life, and I trusted him when he told me he was also ready to choose me for life. And that is why, if the right guy came along, I would be happy to get married again, even if I'm only 24.

Unsent Letters: To those with broken hearts

This is part of a series of posts titled "Unsent Letters." I have written letters that I don't intend to send as long as I can remember as a coping mechanism. As a child, I wrote letters to God, to my parents, to my teachers. Sometimes, I don't send them because they are for my eyes only, containing my most deeply held secrets. Sometimes, I don't send them because I'm afraid they might hurt the named recipient. Other times, I don't send them because I'm lazy, or because I don't want to buy postage, or because I forget. This series is an ode to the letters I'll never send. See the full series here.


Dear friends and acquaintances,

I want your hearts to stop breaking. I want your partners and your mothers and your grandparents and your friends to stop abusing you, and to stop otherwise mistreating you. I want you to be happy.

I want you to have the courage to leave scary and unsafe situations.

I want you to have the courage to set boundaries to ensure your happiness, and also the courage to stick to those boundaries.

I also want you to not have to have that courage.

I want you to have the strength to care for your self--your physical health, your mental health, your emotional health.

I want to buy you a bottle of wine or a latte or a cup of tea, and I want to hug you and tell you it will all be okay.

I want to actually be able to believe myself when I say that it will all be okay (because it will, but I struggle with having faith in the future as well).

Some of you I know well, and of you I know very little. But I want you to know that, regardless of how well I know you, I am here. Call me. Text me. Message me.

And I want you to know that my heart breaks for you.

And I want you to know that I pray every day that it will get better for you.

With love,
Lindsie

Anxiety, when it doesn't make sense

There's nothing especially insightful or philosophical about this post, but I wanted to quickly touch on what it's like when anxiety hits and there's no clear reason.

I woke up anxious today, and I can't explain why.

My life is beautiful. I am happy. I am hopeful. But today, I was also anxious.

I'm not sad about a boy (actually, quite the opposite, but that is a post for another day). No one has died. I'm a little homesick--being in Seattle and wishing I was on the east coast--but that's not such a big deal. I'm not having trouble at work. I even had a great weekend with an out-of-town friend.

But today, I was still anxious.

I didn't eat well because I was anxious. I ate frozen sweet potato fries for lunch.

I slept much of the day.

TMI, perhaps: My dermatillomania was especially acute today; I have a sunburn on my scalp that is peeling, causing the urge to pick to soar.

I did this online self-care tutorial, and I forced myself to shower, and to drink a glass of water, and to text a friend, and to make those sweet potato fries, and to call my dog over to snuggle.

(I'm blessed to have that amazing friend to text (and to suggest online self-care tutorials) when I have days like this, by the way. BIG shout out to her, and to my mom and sister, who both talked to me later in the day.)

Someone asked me why I was anxious, and I had no real answer. I said some things about how others around me are experiencing trauma, and that sometimes I'm overly empathetic to the point that the trauma of others triggers feelings in me. I also said something about how my colitis is flaring because I stupidly drank two glasses of wine two nights ago, and how this has made my body feel especially exhausted. I also said something about how holidays are hard.

But, while they may be exacerbating the symptoms, none of those things really feels like the root cause of the anxiety.

And I think I am feeling better now, but I am going to go to bed early tonight, and I hope that I wake up without anxiety tomorrow.

On loving unconditionally, Part II

About a month and a half ago, I wrote about loving unconditionally. In the post, I wrote about being brokenhearted, but about how being willing to wait it out was me loving unconditionally.

I've since decided to move on from that relationship. I will probably always care about that person, but I've decided not to choose him anymore, and I'm no longer grieving the loss of our relationship.

Does that mean that I've failed at loving unconditionally? Am I somehow lesser for moving on?

I don't think so, for two reasons: First, loving unconditionally doesn't require completely avoiding hurting another person; it requires considering that person's needs in your decisions. In this case, he needed independence, which meant I needed to stop choosing him. He might be hurt by the fact that I'm not hung up on him anymore, by the fact that I'm no longer grieving, by the fact that I'm moving on, but it truly may be what he needs. And, in the long run, I believe we will both be happier.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, loving unconditionally necessarily must include love for oneself. I've been through enough abusive situations in my life to value the skill of choosing oneself over others when it is necessary. I am happy with where my life is going right now, and my happiness matters. Others might be hurt in the short-term by my life choices, but my happiness matters. I'm not suggesting complete selfishness in life, but it is important to stand up for one's needs.

Loving unconditionally doesn't mean I always have to be there for this person, in a physical, "I'm your girlfriend," committed sense. Loving unconditionally doesn't mean I have to put my life on hold or abstain from pursuing happiness. It just means that I'll always care.

Dating without intent to marry: Part II

Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote a post about dating without intent to marry. It was spawned by the image below, which I had seen on Facebook. In the post, I talked about how I didn't want to date with the end goal of marriage anymore, how I wanted to live in the moment, how what will happen will happen.

It was a lie. I lied. I lied to myself. I lied to my boyfriend. I lied to my friends. I lied to you.

I said I was done dating with the intent to marry. I said I wanted to be present in what was happening currently, not think about the future.

It was a farce. That's just not who I am.

I want to have a lifetime commitment with someone someday. Not necessarily marriage, but a lifetime commitment. And I want to date with that purpose. I'm tired of dating without any sense of security or future.

So let me make this commitment to myself: I will not date casually anymore, not even at the beginning of relationships. I will only date someone if a future is a possibility.

On choosing to love

Love is first a feeling, but foremost a choice.

The feeling is fleeting--it can quickly be filed away or discarded or it can fade. When followed by a choice, however, the feeling of love becomes a powerful thing indeed. It becomes whole. And this is when the work begins.

To stay in whole love, a choice must be made every moment of every day--a choice to fight, a choice to stay, a choice to be faithful, a choice to do our best to give our whole selves to that person.

I once made that choice for 2193 days--more if you count the roughly 28 days afterward that I tried to keep fighting, even though I knew it was for nought.

Another time, I made that choice for 767 days--again, more if you count the roughly 60 days afterward that I tried to keep fighting, even though I knew it was for nought.

Both times, I kept fighting--knowing it was a losing battle, knowing I was the only one fighting in a struggle that required two. At first, I kept fighting (kept choosing) because I was in love, because I didn't want to live without my partners. Eventually, I kept fighting (kept choosing) because it felt comfortable, because it felt righteous, because it felt dutiful.

I kept fighting (kept choosing) because I believe fighting is sometimes required. Because sometimes, the feeling is going to fade for a while, but I believe we can choose our way through the faded spots. (The thing is, this probably requires both parties to choose; not just one.)

Both times, I stopped fighting because I became tired, with the type of exhaustion you feel in your bones and in your soul.

And both times, when I stopped fighting, I first felt like a failure. I felt like I had abandoned my post. I felt vast loss, like I had given up on something good, something meaningful.

Once that feeling passed, I began to feel guilty. I'm feeling that way right now, actually: Guilty.

After 60 days of fighting, give or take, with no real purpose, I gave up. I opened myself to choosing myself, or even to choosing someone else. And I feel guilty for it. Happy, satisfied, optimistic, sure of my decisions, but guilty.

This should be harder. But it isn't. I should still be grieving. But I'm not. I shouldn't be happy. But I am. I shouldn't be ready to move on. But I am.

I'm simply making another choice.

(Is that okay?)