I had a “dream” the other night. Or maybe it was a nightmare.
I watched myself lying there limp. Hovering over myself, watching my body from outside itself. Stuck. Curled into the fetal position. I would not move. Just breathe in. Breathe out. My chest rising aggressively and then plunging. I could feel the heaviness of each breath enter and leave my body.
If I wanted to create thoughts, there was no need. Comatose. Alive enough to actualize that my body had given up. While I watched myself, I knew even if I was breathing, I was dead.
*
I constantly feel like I have to keep proving myself. I always want to be “better”. To want more. A better writer. More confident. Create more meaning in my life. It finally hit me that my worth is becoming rooted in one accomplishment more. If I have this, then I will be the better version of myself. It takes away from what I have already accomplished. I can’t sit in those wins, because I am always chasing the next title. If my body stopped working as it did in my dream, what would I feel about what I’ve accomplished so far?
I wrote during one of my writing workshops:
Freedom is one step forward and three steps back
Always reaching for something more
Why am I never satisfied?
*
I decided to watch Hamilton again the other night because I had some of the songs stuck in my head. I kept thinking how I felt like Hamilton. The anti-hero with so much ambition, but he has self-destructive pride. I fear that maybe I am the same.
‘Where’s your family from’
‘Unimportant. There’s a million things I haven’t done but just you wait, just you wait…’
A man who will “never be satisfied.”
Then there’s Alan Burr, who was willing to “wait for it.” He’s the antithesis of Hamilton. He breeds caution: “talk less, smile more.”
I’m impatient. And maybe that is why I keep pushing towards something. Finding the next challenge, the next way to show I deserve what I have. I can never be satisfied.
I don’t want to be like Hamilton. It was his ambition that made Hamilton successful. It was his ambition that caused his death.
*
I don’t know when this ambition truly started. I never was a high achiever in school. I was just satisfied to pass, spending time with classmates. I was never overly competitive.
Or maybe I was. I was just not allowing myself a chance to try.
I used to be afraid of failure, and in that, I stopped myself from experiencing new challenges. I didn’t know how to handle the pressure. I never learned the proper ways to maintain a competitiveness that is not destructive. It was either succeed or don’t try.
I look back and think what happened to that little girl who got so mad she was losing at a game of Life she decided to sabotage the board, throw the money in the air and yell “want some money!”
When did she give up?
Despite childhood messages of “if at first you don’t succeed,” there was a shame that kept me sitting on the sidelines.
Was it when she didn’t make the cheerleading team in middle school, despite all her friends being able to join? Even though I had been practicing my handsprings and splits.
Along the way, that driven version of me got lost, and now she is showing up again.
I have a hunger more ravenous than I care to admit.
Maybe not in the sense of accolades.
I am still figuring out where to satisfy this hunger.
I still feel like I have something to prove. Maybe that’s the part of the story I’m still living.
Beautiful and inspiring 🌹