Insecurities

As I lay down to sleep the other evening, a familiar message played in my mind. The message tells me that no one would notice if I just disappeared, if I were no longer here (in the fullest sense of that phrase). The message says that I don’t matter enough to any one for them to miss me. And it hurts deeply, because it touches my deepest insecurity: the one that says “I don’t matter.”

The message was fueled that particular evening by the way events had played out. I had chosen to go out for the evening because I didn’t want to sit at home. I had reached out to some friends to see if anyone wanted to join me, but received no response. I decided to go anyway, because I wanted to demonstrate to myself that I had the confidence to go out on my own. This may sound strange, but for me it’s a very significant mental obstacle. The evening passed enjoyably enough. I even crossed paths with a few people I know. But in the end I sat alone in a bar enjoying my vodka cocktail and feeling terribly lonely. It’s an awful feeling. Which fueled my insecurities and reinforced the message in my mind. On such nights, thoughts of leaving this world are not so distant.

That particular evening I more or less successfully turned off the message by recalling the people I do matter to. I pictured each individual, reflecting on what she meant to me and how she would miss me if I were not here. I thought of the friends to whom I can turn for support and reminded myself that their unavailability on a given evening did not negate their care and love. This positive self talk turned away the demons and I fell asleep peacefully.

But the demons will be back. They recur often enough, sometimes with much greater intensity. When they are at their worst, I try to reach out to friends for support, which is a risk, because if no one responds, it only reinforces the very message I’m trying to turn off. Not reaching out is an even greater risk though. These demons can lead me into a very dark place, one I almost never speak of.

Writing this has taken a great deal of effort. My mind shouts at me not to make myself so vulnerable, not to speak so honestly about things that best remain hidden. I want people to see me as strong, as successful, as a woman who has risked a lot and in return found so much reward. Which is true, but it’s not the whole picture. I’ve made great strides in affirming my own worth to myself, but I still have deep insecurities in this regard. Even with my closest friends, I hesitate to speak of my struggles, for fear that they will reject me. Thankfully, they are better people than that and the love and support they continuously show, the words of affirmation they regularly share, are slowly pushing back the darkness inside, slowly wearing away at this message that I do not matter.

My deepest insecurity also fuels one of my greatest strengths and passions: to communicate to others how much they matter. I worry sometimes that I will drive my friends crazy telling them how much they matter to me. I’ll take that risk, because I think we need to hear that message, even if we don’t have the insecurities I do. In a world that communicates the opposite message to us so often, we desperately need to hear how much we matter, how valuable, cherished, loved and important we are. If I were to die tonight without another chance to talk to my friends, I would not want a single one to have any doubts about how much they mattered to me. I even try to communicate this message, at a less personal level, to the people I interact with in the course of my daily life. Because when we know that we matter, even just to one other person, it transforms our perspective on ourselves and on the world around us.  

I share this tonight in the hope that, if you find yourself in a dark place, hearing messages like mine that say you don’t matter, you will realize that you are not alone. You are not the only one who feels this way at times. You do matter. You matter because you are you, because you are unique and irreplaceable. I hope you can hold onto that truth and speak it to yourself over and over. You are not alone. You matter to me.