Sometimes I feel like I failed in everything
Failed in my friendships, my dating life and my career but also what do I know? I also think life is just a big ball of fuzz no one is literally able to get right.
You know that saying, ‘the grass is greener on the other side’ ? I am constantly envious of other people of what they have and what I don’t have. I think it comes from my lack of confidence in what I do. I recently discovered that I have inferiority complex, that I feel inferior to many people around me. Constant comparing, constant compete and constant proving (to self?) of accomplishments.
I don’t know why it took me literally 29 years to actually phrase this massive insecurity I have around others that can just be called inferiority complex but once the issue has been identified, it was so clear to me that I had this since I started becoming a part of society.
It is pretty easy for me to pin point when exactly I felt inferior to others. I liked studying actually, and I tried really hard in school. But in 1st grade, I did struggle academically for the first time. I was good in class but very bad with tests. I couldn’t out put what I just learned. At the age of 7, my teacher was actually very kind, but I remember I had to stay late after school hours with the other kids who didn’t do well with the test. I felt humiliated even though it wasn’t just me, and I was fucking 7, I still remember my face turned red and I felt pure humility for the first time while I was writing over and over the same Kanji’s on my note trying to get it right. I looked around the class, and from a very young age I knew that I was mixed race which was rare at the time in Japan, I already stood out because I looked and dressed differently from the other kids, so my instinct as a child was I needed to blend in as possible. But that day, I failed. I failed in ‘getting it right’, and I failed in being the ‘normal kid‘. I was the kid who was half Japanese who also can’t get her Japanese Kanji’s right. This I think was the first time as a kid, I knew I was different but I didn’t want to be more different by being dumb or slow at school.
Years after, I did end up getting better at studying, in high school, I was in most of the top classes for the subjects I chose. There was this other girl who was always top in English. Due to my circumstances, I aced all my tests in English. English was a subject I was always Number 1 at and my name was on top of the board whenever we did a test within the whole school. There was never a time I ‘lost’ to this other girl who was always second best in English from me. But whenever it was results day, my heart was going so fast like I could barely breath. It really felt like the kids next to me can hear my heart beating so fucking loud, that’s how nervous I was and fearful of what if, what if I lost the only subject I’m really good at to this girl? If that had happened to me, being good in English was not just academically important to me, but from 7 years old, I remember a knee-jerk reaction of standing out because my mother was foreign, and once high school English gave me the strength to actually celebrate that difference and be the top in my class, this was my whole personality now. If I failed in being the number 1 person in the only thing that gave me a little bit of confidence, I wouldn’t have known how to get back up from that- We will never know, because I never ended up being second in English. (Maybe I should have experienced failure here though)
Even though, I had a high GPA score and I became good in class, I still was very self conscious and nervous to make a mistake. I never raised my hand in class because I didn’t wanted to say the wrong thing. I never wanted to stand out unnecessarily then I already did which was my mixed race. Containing my personality and thoughts just for the sake of not wanting to be a sore thumb in the crowd, while you struggle so much with your identity, I think about this a lot but it really shaped how I created my friendships and career after that.
I feel very tamed in my own skin all the time. I always dreamed of having a bunch of delightful friends I go out drinking with at bars on a week night, and I talk shit about that night to my boyfriend, while I have a cool job I love. Yes, I have delightful friends, but we never go out drinking because they are busy with their jobs they love and some don’t even drink much. I don’t have a boyfriend of course, and I also don’t have a job I love. I say all of this because all my life, I have tried so hard in perfecting a life for myself. To not have it stained because I felt like people are already watching me and judging me, I needed to be at least bare minimum ‘normal’. So for me, the normal adult things in my head was things like having a bf or going out with friends and once that is not fulfilled, I feel like I failed. I feel like the perfect self image I have created for truly myself, was all for literally nothing.
There’s a re occurring thing my friends say that ‘I’m too hard on myself’ and I think this is a really true observation of me. I am hard on myself. I hate the idea of being lost at 29. My goal was to have a solid career I love, a boyfriend and having drinks with friends and dancing and getting dressed up. And when none of these actually happen and it’s happening to other friends I see on social media, I have to say, it hurts. I feel like a big ball of failed fuzz. Setting myself up to things no one else actually cares, seems to be like a theme for me. I think I set myself up to expect so much in life sometimes and when people or things are not reciprocated the way I expected in my head, I feel a huge black hole in my heart. But that shouldn’t be on them, it’s just an idea I created in my head. It’s just an idea that failed. And ideas are not real, some become real but not this one. So no, I haven’t ‘failed’ in life maybe, but it’s more like what if Alice didn’t fall into that rabbit whole and took another path feeling. The feeling of, what if I took another route and started fresh?
🌈Cultural Recommendations of the week 🌈
Reads📗
-The joys of frivolous sex by Megan Nolan
I love it when there’s a piece who stands by single women. Because us single women’s problems are so ‘frivolous’. Maybe I’m dramatic, but a voice for the voiceless.
To even complain about what it feels like to live alone and not be able to date right now is regarded as unseemly, dismissed as trivial.
-Fierce Attachment by Lena Dunham
I am falling for the Lena Dunham train all over again since re-watching Girls again. This piece about her struggling to keep female friendships together is so relatable (kind of) , mastering her relationships with girls, women. It made me text my friends even I had nothing to say.
-podcasts vs other media? what’s the appeal? by Caila Litman
-LennyLetters ‘separate bed(ding)’
-Do I really need to be on Social media?
-Rooms of their own. Five women writers on where they write
Our one and only, Mieko Kawakami is in the interview as well, and her room is fab <3
-マジョリティの特権を可視化する〜差別を自分ごととして捉えてもらうために〜
Podcasts🎤
-Naked Beauty: episode #euphoriamakeup & moonlight skin Ft makeup artist Donni Davy
New obsession alert 💖 This is now my goto Podcast for beauty stuff! This episode with the artist behind all the euphoria makeup was truly so beautiful. I loved the story behind it. (also all the products recs from hip people and artists themselves are so good, omg)
Each Episode is just about 10-12 minutes, hosted by David Greene. The people in the episodes are just normal people like us, that one day they realized their home is not theirs anymore. There was an episode where the host says, ‘you realize you are a fugitive in your own country?’ and the women cries there because I don’t think she had a moment to realize that because she needed to find safety first.
Recipes🍣
(I am a huge home cooking person, and love food. I would like to have this section as well. You can also follow me on @love_a_little_food on Instagram)
-Cardamon Rolls aka Kardemummabullar)
God I fucking love these! When I went to Sweden in 2016, I had one everyday as a ritual. I made them my own, they are indeed difficult, especially to form them, but you know me, I’m 適当, so I did it as I went. This is the recipe I used.
- Kimchi Udon with a friend egg
I’m telling you I saw this reel on Instagram, and I was like I need to make that ASAP. One of the best dinner meals I made in a while and it took me literally only 8 min or less.
this week’s essay was a little therapeutic for me. I kind of rediscovered things about myself that I wasn’t able to.
Thank you for reading again <3 Megumi x