I’m on my unusually low-rise bed, staring at the ceiling. I’m twenty-one now, and I’ve never been so aware of my insecurities.
I wasn’t insecure until I went to college, which is a weird, backwards experience. You spend most of your life being sure of yourself and confident, then poof, it disappears one day. I find that most people I knew from high school only became more sure of themselves and shed the insecurities that are typical throughout your pre-teens and teenagedom, while I only started to see my own insecurities. Maybe it was that I had started to go to school with so many more people than I had ever experienced before, but it made my first two years in college difficult. I had acne, my clothes didn’t feel cool or trendy, I recently just had my hair cut way too short, I was a commuter with little way to connect with people, and I was going through a recent loss.
After I started thinking about myself too much, it became an obsession for me. I wanted to look like the YouTubers I had watched, I wanted to live in a big city, I wanted to keep buying more and more to make me like them, I wanted to be a cool party girl who didn’t have to try to make friends or have boys in her life. I wanted abundance, more than anything. But it was never enough. No amount of money I spent on niche, expensive clothes made me feel much different. No annoying Accutane courses made me feel that much better about myself, because once it was done, I needed to wear makeup in new ways that suited my face type and accentuated my face in a way that screamed “effortless” like it did for other girls. Moving the goalpost became common practice for me.
I felt it and (still do) feel it in romantic relationships too. It’s a weird complex that I’m not sure makes sense to a lot of other people. I know that I could have a boyfriend, and I know I’m pretty enough to talk to guys easily and get attention when I go out. But I’m insecure about their experiences in the past. I’m obsessed with thinking about the girls they dated; the ones they really loved for being cool, for being easy-going, for being witty and interesting in the most magnetic way. Deep down, I know I’m these things too — at least that’s what my friends tell me. I know I’m funny, I know I’m cool, and I know I dress in a cool, eclectic way. But why is it never enough to stop thinking about it?
Then there are the friendships too. I want to be all of my friends’ number one friend, and connect with them in a way that’s so unique and special, and perceived by others as the type of friendship that’s impenetrable. More than anything else, I want to be known by somebody in a way where I don’t have to finish my sentences or explain my convoluted expressions and way of talking; it’s just understood. They notice small things about me in an accurate way, like the way I twirl my hair obsessively, the way I make the same playlists over and over, the way I twist my ear piercings when I think.
But I’ve had these things. I have some of these things, the close friendships, relationships — and it never feels like it’s enough. Why?
I only started to realize that these things I want so badly — that I obsess over are never really enough for me in almost a cruel way. I recently heard the quote “One of the hardest vanities to surrender is your desire to be understood”, and it was something that made me think about the way I understand relationships in my life. At the end of the day, I want to be understood wholly and unconditionally. And you might be saying, “Isn’t that something everyone wants?” But it differs in that it’ll never be enough to have all of these things, because my obsession with perfection in the aspects of love, life, school, aesthetics is an endless well. It doesn’t stop, which is a hard realization to have. No single person can ever satiate all the needs I have.
I don’t know if I can wholeheartedly say I am now a lot happier realizing this idea — I would say the opposite of that, actually. But I also understand that knowing this about yourself is such an important realization to have sooner rather than later, and I’m grateful to have had it.