a recovering addict

Insecurities. Who created them? WHY do we have them?
I've realized over the last little while just how insecure I really really am.
It SUCKS.
When you surround yourself with so many people that are so much better at things than you are, even the little things, it's hard not to think of your inadequacies. I think for us all, well at least maybe me, inadequate feelings come easy. It's like a snap of the fingers and all the sudden my skin is not as comfortable as it was, I don't want to be in the room, I fear that I will make a mockery of myself. I fear weakness. I used to think one of my good friends was crazy because she feared failure so much that she would spend hours and hours studying. Crazy to me, and yet, I'm the same (maybe not in studying--as you can tell from my grammar and grades!), I fear weakness so much that it has begun to consume me and my thinking.
I don't know how to stop feeling the way I feel, I don't even really know why I feel it.
For me, it's the need to be needed. I enjoy helping, I enjoy knowing that someone needs me to do something for them. I enjoy being the first person to be asked. I find security in knowing that I'm someone's go-to person. I like being depended on. I like being the favourite. I like having a bunch of people around me who want to talk to ME. I like being able to tell stories and NAME DROP. I like when people tell me I'm good at something, even if I'm not.
Listen to this BULL SHIT. I keep going to type a sentence about how selfish I am and backspacing, because I KNOW that it's my insecurity, and I'm willing to justify it by that.
We all are, aren't we??
We allow ourselves to get off the hook, by justifying it away as an "insecurity".
I was reminded last night by a really good friend, he told me once that I needed to be more confident in my relationships and the people around me that I love, specifically in my friendship with him.
I started to question if confidence is what I need?
and if the answer to that is yes, how does one go about attaining a higher level of confidence?
A couple years ago, one of my good friends and I led our youth group. It was a small small church (hence, why they LET ME lead a group of formable minds!), I was AMANDA MARLOW, everyone knew me, everyone knew what I was good at, and everyone always needed those things. When a youth leader was needed, I was there. When a singer was needed, I was there. When a sunday school helper was needed, I was there. It was easy to be needed, it was easy to feel confident in my strengths, because I was one of the only people around who had them (not to sound cocky). Likewise, in my house with my family. I am AMANDA (sometimes I'm called other names of course!), I contribute by using my strengths and I am who I am. Without me, it wouldn't be the Marlow family, at least it wouldn't function the way it does. What makes this different though??
I think I've always been this insecure. I think now, I'm just starting to admit it, which is like reopening scars that have been part of me for a LONG time. It makes me weak. It makes me vulnerable. And more that that, it makes me SCARED.
I fear not being needed.
I fear not being around and being replaced.
I joke all the time with my good friends, not to replace me when I don't see them for awhile. But in reality, it's truth.
I'm most scared with my relationships with my small group and kids in the youth group. That if I leave, even for the summer months, they will find someone else. I know I know, there's no other Amanda, and you can tell me that again and again, but it doesn't help.
I don't really know what does help.
It also doesn't help knowing that that is an ineffective attitude for them. That in thinking those thoughts, I'm not looking out for their best interests, but instead, thinking of how I can maintain the level of comfortability and need that I have right now.
I keep saying, I just need to get over it. But how do you undo what you've believed for YEARS. It almost feels innate within me, if not innate, at least embedded so deep down it has become part of me.
Like an addiction. Yes there is freedom, but once you've realized your addiction, you can no longer be around it. How on earth, do I become free from my insecurites, have healthy, authentic, and genuine relationships and continue to walk away from my fears?
Is it even possible in this life? I don't know.
I just know that I hate hating. I hate feeling like a monster when some of my best friends are so good at things and I know I should be affirming. To be quite honest, I think sometimes I affirm by being fake. That is sick.
I talk about bringing value and worth to people. Yet, look at what I'm doing. I'm STRIPING people of their worth. And not to say they are valuable based on the talents and giftings they have, more so to say that I'm not willing to look past those things to the true nature of WHO they are.
I wish there was some 12-step program to train me to get over this. I wish that I could wipe my brain and heart and the hurts and pains away and begin again. I know that a response, and often my response, to that is that it already is wiped clean. But how and why do I still face this day in and day out?
Why is it that some days I'm great and on top of the world and yet one comment can snap back to the hell of inadequacies?
I feel like I keep rambling, and I'm sorry for that.
I guess just typing this out is one step towards recognition and further, healing.
Maybe it is through this, that I will begin to understand and see others as insecure people who need to be secured in my relationship with them, or maybe even more than that, the only way of repairing the brokenness caused by one insecurity, is to piece it together with someone else's brokenness from their insecurity. And maybe, that is how we gradually begin to become recovering addicts and experience freedom in it's truest form. Maybe that's the way to walk towards freedom...arm in arm with another addict, who sees you as beautiful and perfected and who you see as beautiful and perfected. That is perfection. And I believe that is attainable on this earth.