The other day, I dug out an old journal from my sophomore year of high school. I figured it would be a funny sort of exorcism of the demons buried in my girlhood. Imagine my total shock to discover sentences within it that are identical to ones I have written recently.
My fifteen year old self writes of being lonely, of wanting someone to love me, of feeling like I may never find that soul mate, that person willing to put everything on the line for me. In my adolescence, I was searching for a sense of belonging, for a place to fit in the world and, sadly, I still am most days.
Reading the entries, I was stunned at how often they referenced other lives, the accomplishments and dramas of my friends and family...I didn't think I was a worthy subject, so I didn't often write about myself, and when I did, it was all about which boy might like me, how I could find validation from male attention, what I needed to do to be more attractive to a potential boyfriend.
How, I wonder, does that happen? How does a young girl--smart and beautiful and kind and interesting and engaged in the world as I was--not see her own worth? And why, at 35, am I still struggling with it?
This article, Extreme Modesty: The Case of the Disappearing Self, offers some insight into why smart women, praised in childhood as smart girls, grow up feeling the need to prove their worth and ability. I feel that, and I feel the need to earn praise that comes my way rather than just accepting it, at least in love relationships.
No amount of self-reflection could have prepare me for the discovery that my central desire at 15 is the same twenty years later: I just want someone to love me. And I guess, for that to happen, I have to learn to love myself.
Why does it have to be so hard?
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