“Don’t forget to fall in love with yourself first.” ~ Carrie Bradshaw
No one could have known it, but I had a self-destructive habit of sizing myself up against almost everyone I met. And I never measured up. Other people were happier. More successful. Better equipped for life. Each time, the internal me failed in comparison to the external them. I was left with a distorted, unhealthy image of myself.
Anxiety and preoccupation with all my perceived shortcomings were too great for me to comprehend. So I did my best to lock my insecurities out, live externally, and avoid introspection. I was unwilling to peer beyond the surface, terrified of what I might encounter if I truly saw myself. I was even more frightened of what others might discover. What if I let people know who I really was and they didn’t like me anymore? The most popular girl in the class might have to find her own way home. Some days I was a great actress. Other days, just an exceptionally good fraud. Regardless, the real me remained off limits. To everybody – including myself.
But I spent little time dwelling on my false-self. Life was far from miserable. I could do or have pretty much whatever I put my mind to. None of that did anything to diminish my doubts so I just ignored them. And it probably appeared to others as if I took my life and all of its privileges for granted. As if I felt entitled to it. But that wasn’t it at all. My attitude had nothing to do with being ungrateful, and everything to do with concealing excruciating feelings of inadequacy.
I sought fulfillment in my relationships with men, and was consistently drawn to a certain type. My ideal man was established, dynamic, and older – usually much older. I figured with those qualities the relationship was sure to be exciting, which was a good thing because I tended to get bored easily. But each of those relationships turned out to be as hollow as my facade. Perhaps because of the glamorous dinner parties, exotic travel and the accumulation of expensive gifts, I overlooked the emotional unavailability, the fear of commitment, the co-dependency and the annoying narcissism of the men I chose.
Always hoping that he was the one, I jumped into each new relationship so fast and hard that I lost any sense of my true self. I couldn’t express my own needs and instead became adept at tolerating and manipulating a string of unsatisfactory affairs. In between “committed relationships” there were dozens of random encounters. I never bothered to learn anything from any of them. I moved quickly from one to the next repeating the same pattern over and over, all the while ignoring my own disappointment in myself. Then, I met Jeff. And for the first time, I had the opportunity to break out of my destructive pattern and make a lasting change. If only I could have gotten out of my own way.
~Excerpt from Cracked . . . Not Broken