What if this were enough?

I'm inconsequential, and I'm going to love it.

I woke up this morning with a thought, a gift, a question: What if someone just came down and told me I’d never accomplish my dreams? 

What if someone told me I’d never be a famous writer and thought leader and author? What if someone told me my life would be inconsequential in the scheme of things? What if my fingers were permanently broken, my mouth permanently mute, my thoughts permanently sealed?

And today, for the first time ever… I shrugged. Fine, fucker. Fine. I’ll be the best at being inconsequential I’ve ever seen.

I don’t often talk like this. I’m a go getter, a fire starter, an interesting philosopher — but for most of my life, I felt like a fucking bum. The dumb bird flies first, is what my mom told me as a kid. I seemed “deficient and slow,” as my teachers used to say, so my mom insisted I’d have to work harder at what I sucked at to get up to the level I was supposed to.

I thought she meant everything. Whoops.

I’ve always felt like I had something to prove. For a long time, I feared if I died tomorrow, my life would’ve felt like a waste because I didn’t get to make an ~ impact on society ~, which is how I defined success. I wasn’t good at making friends, tidying up, working with my hands, academics — so I would just be an inspirational emotion-alchemizing writer. 

How I measured my worth. I wanted to impress people and not “waste my potential” by letting my trauma in so hard it would stop me from surging ahead.

I did a lot with this. I won’t bother explaining my “objectively good accomplishments,” because that’s besides the point. None of you who I’m not close to in real life would know the pain I go through unless I put it out here. We all suffer from curation. But I don’t. I’m here to be as confusing, messy, and insignificant to my “”audience”” as I want to. Because, FUCK! IT’S ENOUGH! FUCK! OH MY GOD I’M SO TIRED OF NOT BEING ENOUGH.

And yes, it’s up to the world to fucking validate me (as I said before). But also, I validate me. I validate me whether anyone else ever will. I’ll just “let myself go,” the thing I fear. I’ll let things burn and crash and relinquish my responsibilities.

… Ironically, doing this more lately has led to me still doing the bare minimum, because I magically charge enough from letting myself feel the proverbial feared laziness, the “Fine!! I’m too tired!! This is enough!! Gah!!” that I didn’t let in before.

In 2022, I have no goals. I’ve never really had concrete goals; I’ve just set intentions and let it go on. 

My only intention for this upcoming year is to often say, as I have for many times I can catch my breath from the whiplash of processing my emotions, “WHAT IF THIS WERE ENOUGH?”

It’s humiliating to remember life isn’t fair, that people will let you down, that your plans will fail. So the best plan is to be creative with what you have now. “What if this were enough?” when I’m sad. And then, the answer magically floats to me when I stop strangling myself with the leash of “it’s not enough!” No, bitch brain, it is.

Because, god, I can’t handle any structure right now, any metrics to where I’m going and where I want to be. I don’t know. I can barely feed myself. I’ll do what floats into my brain without pressing on the gas pedal. I’m a fucking electric car, k?

As this year looms forward even with this question in my toolkit, I still anticipate suffering. Not having enough money, not having enough validation, not having enough romantic company. And yet, the only way to get enough is to start to see it as enough. The only way to get $500 more is to be grateful for the $1 I have. 

Because I am so sick and tired of shaming myself for being not enough. I am so sick and tired of the shame holding me back from BEING enough when everyone “with what I want” is also in a prison of their own making, when it’s on me to get creative enough to stave myself over until I can have everything add up. 

I’ve cried from feeling worthless more this year than in a very, very long time. And yet I’ve also laughed in delight more than in a very, very long time. I’ve cracked my heart open, because now when I hurts, I remind myself, “this is enough.”

For I can tell you as a goddamn intense Capricorn and Leo, that I was not made naturally to be complacent. I was not made naturally to be a bumfuck. The year I let myself loose the most was the year I had the most self worth and did the most things. But so what if I wasn’t a success? So what if I was a bumfuck? What am I going to do? Die? NO bitch. I’m going to get up and live another day being like, “by God, if this is all I get and this is supposed to be enough, I’ll MAKE it enough somehow.”

And over time, I recharged enough with gratitude to let go of what did not serve me. I let in what did but which I couldn’t receive. And it all started with, “this is enough.” That does not mean you settle for less than what you deserve. It means you focus on the internal gratitude that helps you DISCERN what you genuinely are capable of harnessing.

I am inconsequential.

I woke up this morning, and I suddenly felt better. I don’t care anymore. I want to be young in the way I didn’t get to when I was a kid, now. The world can wait and change, maybe, when I’m not looking.

But for now, this is enough. I’m enough. And I’ll go into this new year believing that, and watching my fucking flowers bloom as a result.