Inadequacy

Today my boyfriend and I had one of our famous "discussions". The one's where I yell and he mostly makes smart ass comments. I was angry and then when he left. I was hurt and I just wanted to take a shower. I spent most of my show balled up, crying on the floor, wondering why any of this affected me so much. The argument was little and stupid and neither of us would care about it in an hour or so, but I get so stuck on the things he says some times. I play them over and over and I get angry all over again and hurt all over again. I realized what I was fighting with was not him, even in the midst of the conversation, I was not even arguing with him or anything he said. Who or what in the hell was I arguing with? My own feelings. He couldn't win that fight, he didn't have even the slightest chance. I was losing and what seemed to be winning were my own feelings of inadequacy. I knew that I was going to wait for him to return and when he didn't want to acknowledge me, I would use that again to validate my own feelings of inadequacy.
In my pity party on my shower floor, I remembered something weird and I asked myself, "do you remember the first time you felt this feeling?" I looked into my past and saw my little self, sitting in the same position I was in. My little girl face, covered in tears recapping just moments prior, staring at a mirror with my drunken grandmother behind me telling me to "look at yourself...look at your face, you even look like him, that's Christopher's (my biological dad) face. That's Chris Moore's blood, not Calloway ( the man I had called dad my whole life) blood." I was so angry and so helpless. What was I supposed to do?
And then it hit me. I looked in the mirror at that weak, docile little girl and I made up my mind after that point in my life. In order to not feel weak and inadequate I have to be loud and hostile. I have carried this into my life. Defending myself, loudly and aggressively for as long as I can remember. But the weakness and those feelings don't go away, they just succumb to something with more energy, but once that energy is released...same feelings.

I know that all of my behaviors won't change over night, but I do know that making myself feel enough is my job. If I am expecting to have the type of intimate human relationships I so desperately want to have in my life I cannot ask my boyfriend, or my grandmother, or my mom to make me feel adequate. First off, who knows if they feel that way about themselves and secondly, asking one person to take on the reassurance of another persons feelings is way to much of a load for any person to carry. If any of my relationships are going to thrive at a level that is even remotely close to what I have in mind, I have to learn to be enough in every space that I'm in.

Lots of love and many blessings,
goddessj