Validate Me [ October 21, 2008, 12:35 am ]

I seek external validation. A lot.

It's been this way for as long as I remember. I was a good girl who got good grades and joined student council and National Honor Society and yearbook because I wanted to be noticed. I wanted praise. I craved attention.

One could argue that that trend continued into college where I was in a leadership program and in res-life and did government and programming and all kinds of stuff. But the difference was that I did it because I wanted to do it. But on some level? I loved getting attention. I adored the fact that people looked up to me and admired me for doing it all while excelling at PR and writing.

And I see it happening again while in grad school. Granted half the shit I take on is required for class or my assistantship.

But.

None of that is the point. It kind of is. But it's not.

The point is that I seek and crave external validation. While I do what I do and did what I did in college because I love/loved it, I still get a huge amount of satisfaction from a compliment or positive feedback. And, yes, on some level every person does this, but I think it's worse for me than most.

I am not enough for me. I need external support. This new epiphany explains my relationship with John....at least in part. I came to define myself as a girlfriend, as someone who was loved and adored and worshipped at times by someone else. It felt good. Really good. Addictively good. But it wasn't good. And clearly it wasn't healthy. But the external validation was something that I loved having.

I'm beginning to understand why everything happened as it did. I may never fully see why he hit me and I might not ever be who I was before that horrible moment. But I am starting to see that I have a lot of work to do on myself and that never would have surfaced if I was still with him.

I need to be all I need. I need to be ok with me. And with everything that happened. And right now I am just not there. And I don't know when I'll get there...or if I'll get there. All I know is that I need to make a commitment to myself and myself alone. And that needs to be enough for the first time in my life.

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