“I don’t know who I am. I wish I knew. I wish I could fix my identity once and for all and let it be only one side of this bulleted list on my chest. You cannot imagine how desperately I want to be a resilient and sexy overachiever. But I’m not. There are good days here and there when I can live up to my standards, and there are bad days when I don’t understand how can I be so lazy, so weak, and so mediocre.
It is a non-stop tug of war: what “me” will win today? What will define me this week? The arbiters in this nonsensical fight are two ideas that don’t want to let go of me. I believe that with age I get worse. Not wiser, tougher, more experienced, and more beautiful. I always look back at what I did and how I was, and it seems that I was more conscientious, more thorough, more hardworking, more fit, stronger physically and emotionally. Just…better.
I also believe that I cannot be “good” unless at some point I am procrastinating, getting low grades, not exercising, and overeating carbs. Being lazy and mediocre motivates me to get better, but I cannot keep improving unless I fall back. My progress looks like: “Two steps forward, one step back”. I realize the logical fallacy in this thinking, but I cannot override these tracks that keeps playing in my mind over and over again: “Yesterday you were better”, “If only you could be better!”
I am a tangled mess of contradictions—my expectations and realities. It can be anything from frustrating to annoying to painful. I know if only I could be who I want myself to be—every day—I could do so much more, achieve so much more, and be just that much happier.
I don’t if this will ever happen or when will it happen, but I remember words of Samuel Beckett: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” I’ll keep failing until I get there