You are Not Good Enough

The destructive nature of positivity

"Flaws are the raw materials of growth; without them, we'd remain uncarved." - Jane Austen

You are not good enough.

That’s not a catchphrase you can embroider on pillows or print on coffee mugs. You can’t write it on inspirational signs in rainbow paint. It’s not a mantra that therapists will prescribe to soothe your nerves. It can’t sell motivational books. You are not good enough. That’s the words of bad mothers and demons. It’s the angry voice with poison teeth that crawls out of the silence to try to ruin your day.

No. You are enough. 

That’s what the pop psychologists say, at least. The inspirational Facebook memes. Your friends. And maybe sometimes you can even believe it. Kind of. On a good day. It’s a thing that you want to believe, at least. Like everyone is beautiful and God has big plans for me. 

Because if you were enough then it’s not your fault that you’ve failed. It’s your parents. Your cruel boyfriends. Your sadistic boss. It’s capitalism, the government, God, the system. Because if you are enough, that means there is an intrinsic value to your soul. If only you were given a chance and allowed to shine. If only there was a rock tumbler for the spirit, so that you could have all your edges and gray, calcified flaws smoothed away to reveal the shiny and polished stone underneath. 

You are enough. You have to be. Because you were born a beautiful angel. The world took a look at your blossoming cheeks and perfect skin and decided that it needed to ruin you. You are the victim of a machine that's greater than you. You have a job that wants to grind you down. Everyone wants to drain you of your time and money. Gender roles and stereotypes and constricting expectations are poisoning and suffocating you. Your depression is manufactured by capitalism and a bad childhood. You're fat because of food deserts and high fructose corn syrup and your stressful job and your husband that keeps ordering takeout and opening wine bottles.

You are enough.

That's just another way to say that you have relinquished control of the ways that you can become better.

Every tyrant wants the world to revolve around them like the sun. If the ways that your life has gone wrong aren't your fault, then you need a villain. You need an enemy to blame. The villages must burn and the landlords and the bourgeoisie and the bad mothers must answer for their crimes against you.

But if you were to stand in the fire and ruin, overlooking the destruction of those who you wronged you, who you felt were standing in your way, you probably still wouldn't feel like enough.

When you climb out of the smoke and stand on a valley to observe the damage, the wind blowing soft and cool against your skin, your lungs clear, the grass will not grow out of the ashes. The youth won't return to your face. The emptiness and the pain won't go away.

Even if tomorrow you walked through the silver gates of Utopia, cast away your insecurity and suffering and exchanged it for free dental care and rainbow creches full of healthy children, it would still have to be built by people like you. People who decided they needed to wrest control of their lives for themselves.

You are not good enough.

That is not a condemnation. It is not a damnation. It is a call of action. It is a reason to be happy.

You have a chance to become someone better. You have given yourself the gift of the power to change the course of your life.

We are all broken in different ways. We all have souls that must be refined with work and dedication and thoughtfulness. We must make ourselves useful, and good, and beautiful through effort and care.

We crawled out of the mud of the infinite. We came out of the dark in a place without stars or air or compassion and we wrested love and truth from the roaring and ugly Inferno of nature. You are the world and the world is you and that means if you want things to become better you must make yourself someone capable of better.

You can be enough.