I've always thought of myself as a little too much and not enough at the same time. Too loud, too quiet, too much to carry, too little to matter. It wasn't something I ever said out loud, but it's a truth I've always felt sitting heavy in the back of my mind. I've never been good enough to make anyone stay. That was the lie I told myself after every goodbye. Each time someone walked away, I didn't just lose them; I lost a little more of the person I had tried to become.
When I was younger, I thought it was because I didn't have the right words to say or the right clothes to wear, maybe even the right smile to offer. I thought it was some secret code that I didn't know how to crack. If only I could be a little more this or a little less that, maybe I could hold onto them a little longer. But time had a way of teaching me that it wasn't about words or looks or timing. It was about something deeper — something I couldn't fix. Something that I wasn't able to give: enough.
They told me I was great, that I was enough — in the beginning. And maybe I was, for a while. But eventually, the cracks would start to show. My restlessness would creep in, my need to run or hide or just be left alone. I was too much, too intense, too unpredictable. And they would go, slowly, quietly, until they were just another name on a list of people who tried and failed to make a place for me in their lives.
I would stand in the silence after they left, wondering where I went wrong. What piece of myself wasn't enough this time? What part of me had slipped out of reach before I could even catch it? And each time, I'd find a reason to blame myself. Maybe I was too much. Maybe I wasn't enough.
The hardest part wasn't when they left, though. It was what happened after. The gnawing emptiness that followed, the long stretch of days where I could only feel the absence of someone who had once filled the space beside me. I would try to rebuild, to put the pieces back together, but there was always this lingering feeling that I wasn't whole, that I had to be something different to be worthy of staying. Something better.
But what if I wasn't supposed to be "better"? What if I was supposed to be just me — the loud, quiet, broken version who could never seem to fit perfectly into anyone else's world? I'd spent so much time trying to convince myself that I wasn't enough that I had forgotten to accept the parts of me that needed to be loved the most — the messy, imperfect parts that had been walking away too.
I learned that maybe being "enough" wasn't about making anyone stay. Maybe it was about learning how to stay for myself, even when everything inside me told me I wasn't worthy of it. Because if I couldn't find a way to stay for me, how could I expect anyone else to?
And so, the next time someone left, I didn't look for the reasons why I wasn't enough. Instead, I asked myself: What would it take to be enough for me? Because that was the only person who would never walk away.