When I tell people that I’m a writer, they often ask to read my work.
“I’m not any good at it, though,” I always say. It is easier than, “I’m terrified of something so vulnerable, something I hold so close to me, being bad.” If they read it and hated it, that would be real, and it would hurt.
I’ve received various replies, most of which blended together. One stuck out to me, however.
“Why do you do it then?”
External validation is euphoric. The confirmation that others regard us positively can override our opinions of ourselves, or even replace them. Where there are gaps in your own self-image, flattery from others fills it in. It can fix that brokenness and put purpose in what would have otherwise been too empty to face.
Until it can’t. The desire to quantify worth upon the praise of others falls through when that praise suddenly falls short. We are surrounded by industries that benefit from our sense of inferiority and our need to replace confidence with an artificial, temporary fix. It objectifies the self until there is nothing left but a patchwork of external opinions. After all, who are we if not what others think of us?
It’s nice, for a while. Those comments your professor left on your essay, the likes and comments on your newest Instagram post, that boy you matched with on Tinder, all of it make it easy to forget the impermanence. Especially as a woman, it is easy to feel as though my value is dependent upon the male gaze.
Yes, I may feel worse about myself than ever but isn’t it worth it if someone calls me beautiful? The superficiality extends to my work as well– my grades and my writing. Why even bother if I’m not receiving some sort of acclaim? None of it lasts, none of it is ever enough. The warmth dies out, leaving only hollowness and desperation for more.
I am tired of needing to be seen, observed, and consumed by those around me.
We should not have to justify the space that we take up based on whether others believe we are deserving of it. I don’t know if I’ll ever be a great writer in the grandest meaning of the word. Why do I write, then, if not for it to be sold and critiqued and remembered after I am dead and there is nothing but a name on a book cover to say that I was ever there at all? I want to be better than rationalizing everything I am through someone else’s eyes.
I want to be more than that, and I think that is what it means to be enough.