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What is it with women that everything needs to be a competition?

Who is the prettiest?
Who is the thinnest?
Who is the smartest? 
Who has the best hair?
Who married the best husband?
Who has the greatest kids?
Who is the best mother?
Who is the best cook?
Who has the best life……

For Pete’s sake …anything and everything is compared, judged and reviewed !! Why? Why does one woman need to be the best in anything or everything? Why isn’t it ok, that some are successful in certain areas, at certain times, whereas others are brilliant in other areas and other times….!!

I keep noticing this trend more and more, and fear it can only lead to disappointment and unhappiness. No one is perfect and that’s more than FINE …having to prove yourself to other women friends is an exhausting task. One that no one will be able to achieve. Save yourself the trouble please and just enjoy your own life and your own goals. No matter how other women might think you SHOULD be doing things, choose your own path as it is YOU and only YOU that needs to live, YOUR life !!!

Why is it that some women feel better when they put other women down and bitch about them? If I’m truly honest about this and do a soul search for answers, the only thing that comes to mind is:  

INSECURITY.

A nasty women’s trait, is to hide one’s own insecurity by focusing on another woman’s insecurity !! Somehow it elevates you from your miserable self by deflecting on an even more miserable soul. We turn our diet starved bodies into hungry feeders on other women’s misery and misfortune, which in turn leaves those poor souls drained of any energy and hit by disillusion. Slowly one will calculatedly suck the life out of the other…

I see this happening all the time, lately, women seem so unsatisfied with their own lives that it is becoming more and more acceptable to bully themselves into other women’s lives in an effort to make some of those, often struggling, women more miserable than themselves.

I am far from perfect, realise it and have often stated it or admitted it. I too feel the pressure, due to many aspects in my life that do not coincide with ‘the perfect picture’, of the Stepford Syndrome.
Some days are tougher than others, some days are extremely good and happy ones. Being quite open about this to the ‘outside world’ makes me vulnerable in the ‘criticism-department’, obviously. When you make something public everyone will have an opinion and because of  a wonderful weapon called ‘freedom of speech’ I am often an easy ‘target’. HOWEVER, please remember that behind the black and white text is an actual human being with feelings and insecurities too.

Which brings me back to the whole perfect woman (Stepford-Wife-Syndrome) issue that we keep dumping on each other….No need to be friends with every woman in your life, just be nice, polite, caring, or just mind your own business, and work on your own insecurities before you go around judging others on theirs. And so dear women friends, let’s not be in competition but complement each other where needed !!!  Nobody is perfect and to be honest, I quite like it that way.

Faced with one of the most difficult tasks in my life due to who I am and how I function, (or not)…I find myself, waiting. Waiting for an answer, a sign, a hint, anything that will make this stomach-aching-clutchy feeling inside of me, settle and calm down.

Once again, I induced the pain and torture of this ‘wait’ on myself….by being careless with a precious gift called ‘love’. One too many rejections, one too many moments of doubt and fear…and the frailty of love dissolved into what if’s and never mind’s …

The pain and regret that directly strike you straight after you get hit by that reality are mind blowing and deeply heartfelt. ‘Not again’ dashes through your mind like a crazy man…accusing you of repeated behaviour and ditto mistakes. Blame and failure set out to win this fight. But who is right…if any of them?!

‘If only’s’ find a way to haunt you down and make ‘what if’s’ ..something of the past. No longer does that future look as bright and colourful as it did the split second before the damage was done. And so, after you hear yourself begging and pleading for the ‘what might have been’s’ ….you realise that all that’s left is waiting. Waiting for what the one you hurt decides your verdict is….:, to continue loving or let go,  that is the question. An extremity like hot and cold….two ‘aquaintances’ usually nowhere near to each other, yet so close and made of the same substance. The treacherous debate will now take place within a mind and heart outside your own.

You find yourself waiting in stages.

First denial, because you cannot believe the damage that was done by your carelessness and the amount of love you might have broken…then comes anger, at yourself for having failed and hurt the one person that always stood by you no matter what. This gets followed by pathetic bargaining, a million promises made to solve every single problem that arises. An impossible and truly unaccomplishable task. So you sink into depression, as you realise what you have lost and broken, and that no matter what you might want to glue it back together with, the wound will have to heal by itself ….somehow….and so you accept. Accept that all that can be done is wait. Wait for a miracle, or wait until time helps heal the wound….and hope that what is left of it when ‘healed’ is still strong enough to survive the next stage….whatever the outcome.

But combining all of the above, the list dashes through my head in constant repetition…and makes the wait a long and painful one, with no one but myself to blame for it.

Whatever anyone says about this topic…I just don’t feel it….the whole loving ‘ME‘ thing…I mean, I see it, and I get the hang of the actual concept, but I just can’t seem to feel it or apply it. Not that I’m an unlovable person, surely not, but actually loving myself on a daily basis?? Nope…it’s not happenin’ !!!

To be honest,  mostly I’m not very pleased with myself or how I handle things, quite appalled even at times..(but I’ll leave out the worst bits, just to spare you…) it’s just that I’m not so good at ‘crisis management’ or even ‘forgiving myself‘ for all my binge eating, lack of patience, vocal outbursts and/or stubborn mistakes that seem to happen over and over again.
At the end of the day, when all goes black and night falls, the same thing happens to me, all goes black and I fall. I fall into the habit of self-criticism. I review my day and decide what should have gone differently, seldom do I have a day that I seem satisfied or even a little pleased about. It’s not that I’m depressed or anything similar, no worries there, I just feel I could and should do better.

I find myself ruled over by my über ME, as if my strict-self comes out, telling me I ate too much, talked too much, spent too much but did too little. ‘This intolerant self’ can get quite annoyed at ME for all that and more….and so the lecture begins…

‘Tomorrow….I shall...’ and ‘after that….I will...’ or even ‘never again …shall I...’

All my weak points get summoned and told off by the dark-night-time-ME. The better ME. Maybe even the perfect ME, yes that’s right.. Über ME

Having said all this, there is little or no room left for any self-love, because I plainly do not fit my own ‘perfect picture’ of ME. And so, I regret the faults, the decisions, the mistakes, and sometimes even who I was that day…(preposterous, I know, because it’s not like I can just ‘change’ that ME, right ?!) but that’s how it is, plain and simple.

You’d think that getting told by friends and family that you are a nice enough person and perfectly worth loving would help out in these circumstances, but NO…for me that tends to inflame the affected ‘I-must-work-on- ME‘ areas. Which in turn brings me more torture when night time sets in, as that becomes another issue altogether.

I find that I am exhausting myself – and others – with this unsatisfying trend. It is making me even more unloved and inaccessible, even to myself. Not to fear though…this too has become a task to tackle according to my nightly fussy-GOD-mother !!!

Tonight however, I plan to outwit the ‘perfect ME’ by telling her that I refuse to be berated on all my faults and defects !!! There will be NO more self-bashing, no more nasty comments and no more hoping to become that better person that I am supposed to LOVE. It’s just not gonna happen. It’s ME, it’s been ME for 38 years and I’m gonna stay being ME for the next 38 years at least. So deal with it. Bugger off and leave me be….
Difficult, complicated, temperamental and extremely indecisive….so much so, that I’m giving up this endless struggle, I’m fed up with it, enough is enough. I’ve tried….I failed, FINE.
All the possible ‘loving ME’ giddinnes will be left up to others from now on. Good Luck with that I say !!

Now I just have to find the courage to feel all THAT  😉

Mies 🙂