I’ve been overwhelmingly frustrated...
It has been building up over the last few weeks, and it doesn’t seem to be getting better.
The frustration just keeps growing and seeping into all aspects of my life.
Frustration with life, people, lack of progress, lack of purpose, lack of identity…all of it.
You name it, and I’ve felt frustrated about it.
It all came to a head by the end of last week.
Work was mentally exhausting in a way that it hadn’t been before.
So much so that I had coworkers concerned at how exhausted I sounded by the end of the day…and that was just by Tuesday.
By the time I got to therapy Friday night, I was a wreck.
It’s not work that frustrates me (although after dealing with, what I can say with complete assurance, the dumbest people in all of America, you wouldn’t blame me).
Ironically, work has been the one respite I’ve had.
It’s the only thing that feels constant and steady.
And although last week made me hate people more than I already do, the stupids descended into my life when I was barely hanging on by a thread.
Very poorly timed on their part, I’d say.
By Friday, everything felt like it was all caving in.
After unpacking it all with my therapist, all of this pent-up frustration boiled down to — I haven’t fully grasped who I am or what the hell I’m here for.
I am unhappy because I’m just existing.
I feel like what the renound composer Katie Perry so eloquently described as, “a plastic bag, drifting through the wind, wanting to start again.”
And with each passing day, I feel like I’ve been drifting farther and farther away…
What I do see more clearly now is how I’ve been hiding myself for so long.
I’ve just been living under shadows that it has clouded my view of myself, so much so that I don’t even know myself outside of it.
Now that I am actively trying to figure out who I am and why I’m here, I am just fumbling around in the dark.
And then I wonder, have I lost all this time because I’ve been afraid to leave?
If I move out from the shadows, won’t it go against how everyone said things are supposed to be?
Won’t it disrupt the time continuum?
I have lived under a shadow my whole life.
I’ve never fully lived as my own person.
I’ve always played second fiddle to someone, and not by choice.
Not always, at least.
I already know the facts … inferiority complexes are natural and normal, especially when it comes to sibling relationships.
Having a successful older sibling and being compared to them happens in all families.
But, as natural and normal as it is, it can also break a person’s spirit, especially when people around you actively promote it.
When the oldest is told they are destined for bigger/greater things, they grow up to make sure their younger siblings remember that and stay in their lane.
That superiority becomes their whole sense of identity and pride, so they become threatened if they feel the younger overshadows them (Princes Will and Harry are prime examples).
Before I continue, let me state that I am not trying to disparage my sister —yes, I’ve been living under her shadow but none of that was her doing.
The roles she and I were given were forced on us by our parents, grandparents, family, mutual friends, and community.
She has never lorded her success over me.
She has never treated me like she was the heir and I, the spare.
She has never treated me as anything but her equal.
Let’s be real clear on that.
So if you think I’m here to pull a Harry, and start spilling tea, it ain’t happening.
Cause there’s no tea.
There’s no rivalry.
There’s nothing.
Unlike Harry, or many younger siblings, I am fortunate enough to have an older sibling who has been trying to push me to see my own greatness for years.
If I’ve been living in her shadow, she’s the one who’s been trying to kick my ass out.
I thought she was just being a supportive older sister, blowing smoke up my ass.
And as much as I appreciate how she’s been trying to tell me this over the years, I never accepted it.
I needed to realize it on my own.
And I think I am starting to now.
Because all this time, I have thought I’ve just been living my life and it has dawned on me that I haven’t even been playing the main character in my own story!
I’ve been playing second lead in my own damn life!
Amid my breakdown last week, my therapist reminded me of the giant oak tree that grows from a tiny acorn.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that the acorn never doubts that an oak tree is within it.
It doesn’t question its purpose or choose to stay under the shadow of another acorn’s oak tree.
When it falls from the oak tree’s leaves, it doesn’t just land on the ground and go, “Oh, good, I’m here. And this is where I’ll stay. This is why I was created — to lay here and support this tree I’m under until I rot.”
An acorn knows greatness already lies deep inside of itself.
It just needs the right environment. Fertile ground.
Sunlight.
Not the shadows of the branches and leaves that it came from.
If an acorn never becomes an oak tree, it’s because it was forced to remain small and hidden.
The smallness was forced on me for so long…that I had become comfortable with it.
Instead of choosing my own path, blazing my own trail, discovering my own greatness….I have settled.
Being the supporting character has become second nature, and I play it well.
So well that I don’t even know what I’m passionate about anymore…
I don’t have big dreams for myself….
I live vicariously through someone else…believing that I am just here to be the wind beneath someone else’s wings.
So I have kept myself from growing and becoming.
I landed on the ground and stayed there.
I believed what I was told — that I was just an acorn and nothing else.
But…
What do you do when you’re an acorn that has believed for so long that is all you were created to be...
Yet something inside you keeps telling you that you are destined to grow into something bigger and greater?
