I Am Embarrassed by My Own Mediocrity
What does your internal monologue sound like?
What do you say to yourself? What do you believe about yourself to be true that you know, maybe somewhere deep inside isn’t true, but you can’t help repeating it like a parrot, as if you are sent on earth to work against your soul, to stand in the way of everything you want.
It will never make sense to me how much we hate ourselves despite secretly wanting to be loved, seen, and understood for the person that we think we are. More often than not, all of us believe that we are this innocent soul who the world misunderstood as the villain.
And yet…
We are constantly ashamed of ourselves, of everything we do, as if there is something rotten about us that we need to hide from the world.
I also feel that we inflict pain on our souls as a way to punish ourselves for our mediocrity, and for ‘not-being-as-good-as-other-people-are.’
Have you felt this way, or am I alone in this land of self-hatred?
The Constant Shame That Leads to Envy:
I don’t think there has ever been a moment in my life when I didn’t feel ‘not good enough.’
If I want something, my first response is — but I am not that good.
If I want to be friends with someone, my first response is — but I am not that good, and they will eventually see that.
It has always been like this.
But instead of rotting away in my room, I try to work extra hard, go all in, bury myself in the pursuit of that thing or person so I can prove to myself that if I want it, I can have it.
My ambition is not driven by love or passion, but by my shame and fear. I am not trying to chase my dreams, I try to run away from my mediocrity that whispers in my ears until I shiver from within that, ‘you are not as good as them.’
So, I not only try to outrun myself but also ‘THEM.’
The thing about shame is that it never leaves your side. It finds a way to speak to you.
Thus, even when I achieve something good, which I initially labeled as ‘too big’ for me, it’s not enough for me. I, then, feel the urge to be the best in what I want. To defeat everyone else. To have more followers than the person who is currently trending in my niche. To have more comments and likes, and shares of my articles than the other writers on the internet.
How demanding, isn’t it?
I know. Trust me, I know.
But I also know that you can never be better than everyone else. Someone will always have ‘more’ than you in any sense of the way.
A person like me, who is driven by fear and shame, will more often than not end up ruining everything good for themselves.
When your condition to enjoy is dependent on being the best, you either become the most hateful, angry, and overwhelmed person who is always rushing to get the next best thing, or you will end up leaving everything behind as a sign of ‘failure’ when you can’t outrun other people, mistaking their achievements as your failures.
In any way, you stand on the ground of your dreams that only wanted to breathe through you.
I have done something like that, too.
I was doing really great in my career up until 5 months ago. I went through a knee surgery in May. I had been struggling with my leg for quite a long time. The knee surgery was rather hard on me. Harder than I thought. So until I could recover, I decided to pause everything.
At that time, when I hadn’t published anything and had to say no to many opportunities, I still couldn't go about my life. I watched as other people moved forward. I saw writers who started when I was on break being so ahead of me. I read their work and felt like a failure. I started thinking I could never be as good as them.
Somewhere around July, I started to feel better. I still couldn’t be as physically active, but sure, I could have started writing and working again.
But I didn’t. I kept making excuses to myself that I am not better yet. I should take my time. Or that I don’t really have anything special to say. Or what should I write about when I am no good? Why should I waste anyone’s time?
Just like that, months kept passing by, but I didn’t touch my laptop. I knew the reason I wasn’t writing wasn’t because I didn’t have anything to say, but because I had convinced myself that I could never be as good as ‘them’, so why bother?
I was so embarrassed by my mediocrity that I wanted to sink deeper into the depths of my own darkness until there was no hope for me. I was imagining the reaction of people to the articles that I had written only in my mind. Based on my shame and self-hatred, I dreaded the reaction. I thought no one would read my work.
I was so embarrassed of the work that I didn’t even create so I never created it.
But I knew if I didn’t write, I would become the most hateful person I know. I will end up channeling my self-hatred on others. I will eventually become the kind of person who blames destiny, circumstances, or God for not having what they want.
Today, I was drinking my evening coffee when this idea of self-embarrassment kept lingering in my head. It didn’t matter how much I tried to distract myself; it kept coming back to me. I tried to binge-watch reels on Instagram. I tried to read so I could say, ‘I'm doing something productive, so I clearly don’t have the time.’ But this article kept writing itself in my head, and I knew if I didn’t write it today, I would inflict the pain of not doing the work I want to do on someone else.
Anyone who is in the creative field knows that the more ideas, dreams, or desires you kill or ignore, the more pain you cause either on your own heart or others around you.
Creative energy, when it is not channeled the way it wants to, finds another way to seek your attention. When you ignore the positive signs of communication from the realm of ideas, the same ideas find a negative form of communication, which manifests as rage, hurt, boredom, laziness, and a sort of hate against yourself and the world.
What To Do With Your Mediocrity:
What are you most afraid of?
As for me, I am afraid of watching myself become someone I hate.
Sadly, I have been watching this horror movie for the past two months or so.
I did become the kind of person I hate. Someone who is always on the edge. You don’t know what will make them angry.
Today, when this idea won’t leave me, I know that if I don’t write today, however bad, mediocre, or cringe (things that I feel embarrassed about), then I will never be able to write ever again.
That thought scared me more than anything else.
You see, I was never good at anything. I never knew what to do with my life. I thought I was good for nothing until I started writing. I knew, if I didn’t write, then there would be no end to my self-hatred. I will always have the knowledge of taking away the one good thing I had in my life.
The reason I am writing this self-reflective essay to you is — I want you to take that chance. To give way to your dreams and ideas instead of letting your self-embarrassment and shame win. Do not let what you believe about yourself become the truth of your life.
If you have an idea, a desire, a dream, do it badly. Do it as badly as you can. If you think you can only make the mediocre version of your dreams exist, so be it. Because,
a) Maybe, it’s not mediocre. Maybe it’s good. We are way too harsh on ourselves.
b) Even if it’s mediocre and it’s not as good as ‘their’ work (whoever ‘them’ is for you), it will be something original. Something that only you could create. Something that wanted to exist through you. Some ideas and dreams are to be shaped, not to be put on the pedestal of competition, but only for the purpose of ‘creation.’ Your idea, your dream, your work is not here to be as good as theirs; it’s there so you can live as a normal person, with a purpose, with something tangible to hold and know that you created this, you gave all your heart to it. And when you are in the process of ‘creating,’ you get to feel alive — you realize ‘Okay, this is what I am here for.’
I know for a fact that I am not even near good, but maybe I don’t have to be. Maybe the purpose of the idea of this article was not to be read by hundreds of people, but for me to enjoy writing it and to feel alive again. To know that I was born to know how it feels to empty your heart into words. Because, oh sweet mother of all that is good and pure, in the past seven months, I haven’t felt as good as I do now, while writing this.
I had gotten it all wrong. I thought it was about how good my work was and where it led me. But it was always only about — how it made me feel and if I was true to my ideas.
I leave it to you now to question — do you want to feel alive through your ideas and dreams, or do you want to wait until your embarrassment leaves nothing but more shame and hate in your heart — leaving behind a grave of everything that ‘could have been.’
Love,
Renuka.
