I Can't Get Anything Right

Have you ever looked in the mirror, and felt so angry, and ashamed, of who you see staring back at you?

I have.

I’ve felt anger, loathing, pain, deep grief, and have wanted to shout out to God or whoever is out there Why??? Why me? What is wrong with me? Why am I so broken? Why can’t I do anything right? Why can’t I be right, as a human …

I felt like I wasn’t right, like nothing I did was right, like I always messed up, and just didn’t belong, with anyone, with any group, or just … at all. My family, and my friends, and my classmates and other students at school, and people I heard or read about — they all seemed to know how to “do” life; they all seemed to understand how to do things, or just how to be, even when they didn’t do things right. It felt like before everyone was born, they all got a manual on how to live and how to be, like maybe angels were responsible for giving out a manual to their assigned human, and my angel failed to give mine to me. Or — he/she did, but the printer had ran out of ink, unbeknownst to my poor angel.

I felt this way for most of my life. It felt worse as a teenager, though. Now, at 33 years old, I can say that I’m mostly through to the other side of this. If you’ve felt, or feel now, how I felt before, I have some thoughts and words that may help you through this.

First, none of us really know what we’re doing.

Seriously. Like that quote goes, (I’m not sure who first said this/who the quote is by), you just gotta roll with the punches — and that’s what we’re all out here doing. Now, the “punches” that come at people often times are not equal in intensity or frequency — some may by financial punches, physical punches, or emotional punches, or there may be a combination of punches, like a few 3-on-a-scale-of-1-to-10-with-10-being-the-most-intense (but, of course, intensity can be subjective) physical punches, followed by back-to-back intensity-7 mental punches and one intensity-10 emotional punch — but we all get hit by things that happen in life. That’s just part and parcel of being human. It sucks, I know. But we’re all in it together. We are all trying our best to navigate life’s storms in the ways that we best know how. So — that means that there really is no One Script or One Manual to live this life by; we are all doing the best we can, with what we have and what we know, with our own internalizations of things, and with the beliefs that the culture and society that we grew up in/live in create and maintain. (All of this is running through our minds consciously and unconsciously, by the way.) You cannot truly “mess up” as a human being, because we’re all learning and growing as we go; we are all doing what we can.

Second, your worth as a human being does not lie in how well you do something, or what you do.

You are inherently worthy because you are. And, the truth is, there will, most probably, be someone who does something better than you — and that’s okay. That doesn’t make you a lesser human being, or a failure, or a hopeless person. As of right now, I can’t really play basketball well. And unless I practice a lot, I will never get to be as good of a basketball player as the late Kobe Bryant. And that’s okay. Just as, say, my dad isn’t as good as connecting with people as I am — and that’s okay. He’s not lesser than me, and I’m not greater than him. (Side note: if someone [or more than one person] verbally puts you down for not being “better than” or “as good as” your brother/sister/cousin/friend/classmate/that one person on social media/your co-worker/your brother-in-law/your family friend’s child/whoever else it may be, remember that they [the person/people putting you down] aren’t telling you what is inherently True, but what they believe to be true, based on their own internal workings.)

Third, there is so much going on internally with someone that we may not ever know or see or understand.

What we see on social media about someone, or what we hear or read about from others, is but a sliver of that person’s life. And even then, that sliver may be curated/polished before it is shown. Someone I know who works as a therapist told me that many of her clients are, from the outside looking in, “successful;” they would probably be the people you believe have a wonderful life, who have it all figured out, who always have a socially-recognized/socially-esteemed answer to “So what do you do?” that people are impressed by, and more. But, those very clients of hers feel depressed, anxious, and lost. So, despite what we see of people on the outside, there could be much turmoil and anguish going on beneath the surface. There really is no human being whose life is “perfect.” The people we compare ourselves to — and/or the people others compare us to — are, just like us, navigating life the best they can.

Fourthly, if you have been told your whole life — or made to feel, and have told yourself this, directly and indirectly — that you’re “just not good at anything,” perhaps you have not been allowed to, and/or allowed yourself to, open up to the possibility of doing different things, and so have never had the chance to find things that you do well.

Or, you are good at certain things, but the people around you looked down on such things/activities, or told you that you wouldn’t succeed at them, or that you wouldn’t be able to achieve anything significant with them. So, you pushed such interests aside, and focused instead on the things that people/society deemed “acceptable” and “worthwhile” — and maybe even “realistic.” But now — give yourself a chance to get back into the things you love doing,* whether that be playing the guitar, taking acting classes in your pursuit of a career as an actor, making pottery, becoming an astronaut, or something else. These things may or may not “make sense” to those around you, but give yourself the opportunity to do what brings you joy. You may find that these are the things that you’re naturally good at.

Finally, and this is something I’ve written about in other posts and have sprinkled in here: you are worthy because you are. You are already worthy, you are already enough, you have always been whole. No matter what grades you get in school, what your GPA is, how many views your videos on TikTok have or how many IG followers you have, no matter what college you got into or career you have, you are already worthy. I get it though — how difficult this can be to realize when you’ve felt the opposite for so long. But it is true.

Storytime: As a kid and a teenager, I felt, deep in my bones, that I wasn’t enough. That I wasn’t worthy. That I would never be chosen or wanted. My siblings did better at me in school, my friends were in more honors and AP classes than I was, I was always the last person chosen to be on a team of whatever game kids were playing (dodgeball and nationball, mostly), my parents frequently talked about how well other kids were doing (I wasn’t doing as well as them) … I just felt hopeless. My parents strongly, strongly encouraged me to become a medical doctor. As in, that felt like pretty much the only option for me. And I tried to pursue that. But, ultimately, that career isn’t for me. (It took me almost 20 years to fully realize and accept, and be okay with, this.) But — I get why my parents pushed that on me. My dad grew up in extreme poverty, and my mom, as a teenager, escaped a war-torn country with her family. So stability and financial + career security were/are extremely important to them because they both know what it’s like to start “from the bottom” and have to build yourself up. Being a doctor, for them, was a surefire way of having financial + career security, and ultimately stability and all that comes with it. Their lenses are colored by their individual experiences, and that’s fine. My not pursuing what they view as successful does not make me a failure, or “not enough.” I just have a passion for something different, and my own lens is colored very differently from theirs.

So, you see, there will always be people throughout our lives — whether friends, family, or complete strangers — who have their own ideas of what is worthy. And that’s fine. But that doesn’t define who we are.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, know that you are not alone. And that you are more than enough.

Take good care of yourself.

Miriam

* “things you love doing” = activities that are safe, healthy, and ultimately beneficial for you (all of this being in the physical, mental, and emotional senses), and that keep others well and safe, too.