Ok, so this isn’t a cliché but it’s a fairly accurate summary of what’s on the menu today.
Since I’ve started looking for common themes in daily life, it’s tragic how often self-loathing and self-pity rear their ugly heads. I have been guilty of both to varying degrees at various points of my life.
It’s difficult to say if social media is to blame for perpetuating it, or just the media in general. Is it more prevalent now or is it that we’re hearing about it more than ever before because we make our lives accessible to everyone 24/7? People are now entitled to every little detail of our lives on demand.
The middle ground is shrinking; crushed between the need to be seen as successful and on the other side, total apathy and neglect. The pressure to succeed in today’s world is astronomical. The smallest ‘failure’ can go viral in a matter of hours if the person ‘failing’ is famous enough. A bad hair day or fashion faux pas makes front page news so the entire world can scrutinize the images until every pore has been analyzed to death.
The pressure doesn’t magically leave you unscathed until you reach adulthood. The fact that preschoolers have entrance interviews is proof the world has gone completely batshit crazy. They have no idea how much their future is riding on getting into the ‘right’ schools. They just want to play with their friends.
Then school starts and it becomes about what cars do the parents drive, what do they do for a living, wearing the latest clothes, how much are you donating to the school and if it’s not enough, your child is excluded from the crowd that can afford to give. Good grades, subject choices, sports, extra-curricular activities in the quest to become a well-rounded individual. It simply won’t do that you aren’t signed up for something! While you’re at it, you’ll need to be equally brilliant at all of it or there’ll be a letter to the parents pointing out your shortcomings.
The pressure to get high grades mounts each year until you realize your entire future is pointless because you flunked a test in some dumbass subject that doesn’t matter anyway. Well you didn’t qualify for the cripplingly expensive college that may guarantee you a job. The fact that you’ll probably end up starting out your adult life under the burden of student debt that would rival buying house is another matter entirely.
In among all of that is being bombarded by how to look, what to eat, what to wear, what’s in and what isn’t, the latest must have gadget that costs a kidney, which car you should be driving and what traits your ideal mate should have.
Social media is saturated with photos of every meal we consume, photos of the perfect moment and nauseating declarations of undying love for the person they’re sitting next to on the sofa. God forbid they should tell the person to their face. It apparently doesn’t count if their nearest and dearest don’t have virtual ring-side seats to the event.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, you’re sitting on your sofa, alone in your non-designer PJ’s eating beans on toast because you’re in debt up to your eyeballs from trying to keep up.
Your friends have the perfect bodies, the ideal mate, the house with the picket fence, 2.5 kids and a dog. They just bought a new car and got a promotion. You’re Mayor of Sadsville with an average life.
About 18 months ago, I had a bathtub epiphany. For most of my life I’ve been trying to live up to being someone else. The kid with her shit together, married with kids and a husband that brings in enough money so I don’t have to work while swanning around doing yoga and driving the car pool.
Enter stage left: Bathtub epiphany. I’ve spent years feeling never quite good enough; years spent feeling like a complete failure because all the other kids were married with kids and a house.
It turns out I was hating myself and piling on the self-loathing and pity for not winning a race I never entered. The things that made me a failure where things that weren’t on the To Do list in the first place.
By society’s definition of success, I was a complete failure. Except I wasn’t. Sure, I’d like to meet someone amazing and get married someday but I don’t have my future wedding planned out in my head. I am too nomadic to commit to buying a house. Dear God, picking a city to live in is an epic mission, never mind ONE HOUSE. That takes a level of commitment I don’t have.
Kids. Oh hell no. I’m sure they’re lovely and there are thousands of women out there who’d give their all to have one. I am not that woman. Sleep deprivation isn’t on the menu and I feel cornered the minute people want too much from me. When cornered I bolt for the hills and nothing short of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy is going to stop me once the exit has been chosen. It’s a wise person who knows their limitations.
That in itself gets people riled up to the nth degree. Tell someone you don’t want kids and it’s like you’ve admitted to killing puppies. Someone once asked me outright what was wrong with me. I’m not easily offended but THAT hacked me off in Technicolor. How about it’s none of your damn business? People do not realize how deeply offensive it is to ask someone what their plans are on child-bearing.
Has it occurred to you that maybe one or both of the couple can’t have kids? Or maybe they’ve just miscarried but no-one knew they were expecting? Maybe they just don’t want any? Maybe it’s an affordability issue? Maybe they’re in debt up to their eyeballs because fertility treatments cost the earth and this is their last chance? Maybe…. You should just worry about your own vagina for a change? Just an idea.
The perfect life I was trying to emulate turned out not to be that perfect after all. While there’s no house to call my own, or husband that I come home to, I have some amazing memories and experiences. I have freedom and that means more to me than anything on this planet.
There’s so much focus on success, however you choose to define it, that we often don’t see how many people have shut themselves off in a bid to cope. Depression is so mainstream you’re almost strange if you haven’t been depressed at least once. We dull our senses with depressants, drugs, cigarettes, alcohol and whatever else is available to get away from the guilt of not being good enough; because we’re not meeting someone else’s expectations. People are tuning out of their lives; in some tragic instances ending it completely.
The quest to be perfect has become so obsessive that people spend hours loathing their reflection because they had an unscheduled snack that amounts to nothing in the grand scheme of the universe. It’s OK to have a minute of pleasure every now and then without having to punish yourself for it.
How much pressure are you putting on yourself? I’ll play Devil’s Advocate and ask are you maybe inadvertently pressuring those around you to perform to your standards? Each person’s dreams and goals are as unique as they are so maybe take a minute before judging someone else’s success or failure.
Before you pile on the self-loathing and pity from having ‘failed’, you might want to check if the thing you’re killing yourself to achieve is something you actually want. Or are you living up to someone else’s expectations of what you should want?
Perfectionism is self-abuse of the highest order – Anne Wilson Schaef
Listen to Anne; you might be able to ditch a ton of baggage at this stop.
