So my sister told me this week-end that my blog was becoming repetitive. Therefore, I would like to apologize for the redundancy. It feels like no one has inspiration. Maybe it's winter, maybe it's just my brain that has been turned off. Anywhoo, in the spirit of innovation, I thought I would share with you an excerpt from a paper I had to write in my literary journalism class. It was an essay about you and your life (in the spirit of Joan Didion). I hope you enjoy this very personal piece. More to come soon, hopefully.
I can’t recall the exact moment but as far as I remember, I have always felt like shit. I remember having from a very young age this feeling of emptiness. This paralyzing sadness of not being good enough. I was a very frightened kid. Not afraid of the world but of my performance. Needless to say, I never had self-confidence. My mom says it’s because she would always do everything for me as a young child for fear I would hurt myself. She would never let me climb too high for fear I would fall. She would never made me clean up my plate, for fear I would drop it and cut myself. When you are never given the opportunity to try, even if that implies failing, you doubt you ability to do anything at all. And so I grew, physically unscathed, but instead of growing out of this fear, the fear grew bigger within.
My first memory of fear dates to my very first test. It was kindergarten and the assignment was to be able to tie your shoelaces. I remember practicing in the stairs for hours upon hours as I was struggling to tie those laces on my little Brooks running shoes. But my efforts paid off and I succeeded. The problem is that I just couldn’t stop trying. I wanted to be sure I could do it. Even while seeing it with my own eyes, I still had doubts about being able to accomplish this simple task. My parents were trying to reassure me saying I was capable but although I could hear them, I really didn’t. When the teacher ask me do to it in front of her, I thought I would faint. My hands were sweaty and shaky and I was sure I was going to get the pink sticker (the sticker for failures). I envisioned the humiliation I was going to get subjected too and that was just unacceptable to me. I did tie my shoelaces in the end. But that episode would set the tone for what life would be for me through elementary and high school. Everything had to be flawless and if it wasn’t I would mentally beat myself for it. The fear of not being good enough, of not being good at all, would harbor in me sadness so powerful, I would feel numb.
But I would never show it. I didn’t want my friends and especially my parents to find out. Because admitting sadness was admitting I wasn’t perfect, that I had flaws. So I was the perfect child. Or so my dad's aunt would always say. Pleasant, cute as a button, well mannered and extremely intelligent. When I was five, I asked my aunt with these exact words at what time she was anticipating leaving. I was a “gifted” kid, although I despise that word because this gift turned out to be more of a burden. I was aware of it through my parents and my teachers. My parents always came back from parents-teachers reunion singing my praises. All the adults around me would expect greater things of me that they would my peers. And I went along with it. I mean, it is flattering to have adults gush about you all the time. It’s also exhausting to live to their expectations of you. And at one point, you end up taking on these expectations yourself, as I found out when I started high school.
