While I was travelling, I started drafting a blog on our generation's values. It was kind of like this social commentary on being 20-something in an inevitable world of social media and the toxic new '#goals' that we have thereupon laid out for our bright, bold lives. Unfortunately, that drafted piece spiralled into bitterness. See, I'm not usually a bitter person (and it actually really disheartened me when I realised what had become the basis of my writing) - but, something about the subject matter really hit a nerve with me. So I scrapped it, and I'm here instead writing about the emotions involved in the process.
The prior piece on our generation's values quite carelessly (hypocritically) criticised the seemingly consumption-driven, travel-fuelled, spontaneous lifestyles of my peers. It criticised them because I was angry. I was angry at my ex boyfriend for leaving me to 'better' his life with travel, new people and new opportunities. I was angry because in my own mind I could not even hold a light to the spectacular, adventurous people he was so desperately craving to meet. I was not a bohemian nomad with nowhere to be and all of the world to see. Not at all.
Instead, I am a 21-year-old girl with anxiety who freaks out when her train connections have an interval of less than 5 minutes.
I am not carefree, nor am I entirely spontaneous. I like to see new places, and experience new people and moments... but I also like being grounded, safe - secure. I like home. I like Sydney and my beautiful, caring and extensive emotional support network. I like knowing roughly where I'll be in 5 years. I like that, it's not a lie. I decided on my career at four years old, I'm starting to think it's just a part of who I am.
I liked being lazy with my boyfriend and eating Halal Snack Packs at 2AM. I liked not having to constantly analyse or worry how pretty I was, because I already had someone who adored me even when I've just woken up (I do not look nice at all when I wake up, trust me, it's like a scene from Where the Wild Things are). I liked having someone to share my little anxieties with on an hourly basis. I liked knowing someone was proud of me for trying. I liked knowing I was enough.
Now that I'm single, I could eat a Halal Snack Pack at 2AM but then I'd feel horrible for fattening myself up when I've got no 'safety net' anymore. Gross thought, but it's true, and I know girls out there feel the pain too. I shouldn't have to feel pressured to be thin to attract male attention, but the truth is that more of that attention that many of us secretly adore comes when we are this thin ideal. How can I not convince myself that it's important? My mind knows it isn't, but my irrational insecurities don't.
Therefore, it's hard for me to think I'm at all enough. I know countless motivational Instagram posts tell us to value our integrity and brains over the mainstream idea of beauty - but even more social media posts celebrate it. They celebrate the girl who is toned, boho and seemingly secure. So, on social media, I emanate that girl. Yet - as I said before - I am not that girl. Parts of me have affairs with her spirit - nights out, holidays, festivals - but mostly, I'm just average ol' me, literally sitting in a Kmart shirt and 3-year-old undies with my dog on my lap trying to make sense of who I am and how I will survive this year single.
I make the statement that I should probably be single for a while for 2 main reasons:
1) I would like to really figure out how to feel pretty and enough without male affirmation
2) I would like to see how strong I can be on my own, because right now I feel pretty damn weak
Look, I am a classic maker of grand statements. I can't say what my love life will be in the near future, but I definitely don't think my soulmate will come striding in to commit to me and my big plans any time soon, so maybe this is my chance to work on how I feel about myself. Not myself on a holiday, or myself at a festival. Not how I feel about myself with a hypothetical partner and life.
Myself.
Just me, as I am.
So I can be the one that determines whether I am enough.
x M
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