Most of my tattoos have been spur of the moment. I have over 100 random thoughts, stupid pictures, or numbers covering most of my arms and legs. Don’t get me wrong, I love the spontaneity of them, and don’t regret a single one. Still, there’s one tattoo that I have thought about quite often, and have never been able to sit down and actually stencil out and place on my body with permanent ink.

Too much – Never enough.

This phrase, on the days that the part of me that wants me to fall to pieces, the part of me that sees every imperfection in myself, the part of me that wants to sit and wallow in the sadness that is always fighting to take over, this phrase covers my thoughts so subtly yet so thoroughly that it’s hard to identify how deeply its weighing me down at times.
I found a note in my notes section today from October 11, 2021.
It read-
“Maybe the reason I am attracted to people that don’t feel the same way about me is because when they do, it feels fake. Because deep down I don’t think I am good enough for them anyway.”
I have been working really hard at not letting this part of me speak out as much. I have been working on positive self talk, on not letting other people control my emotions, on believing I am good enough and not too much no matter what the people around me choose.
But today, I speak from the part of me that wrote that note in 2021.
I have been so close to love so many times. Every time I get too close, it slips out from under my fingertips. It doesn’t matter what I look like, how healthy I am, how much I fight for it or how nonchalant I am, it always dissipates, my confidence and hopes along with it. I choose to trust each time I get the idea that maybe now is my time, and I never am chosen in return.
What is the flaw in me that keeps me from solidifying anything real?
What mark am I missing that would make the only ones capable of giving me what I am so desperately searching for, be the ones that offer it to me cloaked in thorns. Like a rose, offering beauty and grace, only to pierce the one daring enough to try and hold it.
What if I am too much? What if I will never be enough? If I spend my days as the lover, and never the loved. Will I always have these waves of sadness and defeat? Or will one day I adjust and stop hoping? Who would I even be then?
Always the secret.
Never the seen.
What is so wrong with me that if I ever hope to be loved, I have to set aside the things that embody being cherished just to feel it. Is the light that I feel inside of me, the one I want to pour out onto those I hold so close, really just like the ones that give you a headache? Instead of a warm glow, it offers a piercing, whitish blue that makes you feel overstimulated and uncomfortable.
How can I have gone this long, and still not found one person who feels like what I have to offer is what they have been looking for?
What am I not seeing?

“If everyone else feels that way, maybe it’s time to consider that it’s not them with the problem, it’s you”. I had a therapist tell me that once, maybe ten-ish years ago? Maybe she was right. Most days lately I have been pushing back against these thoughts. Most days I am successful. Most days I’ve got my middle finger up to my last heartbreak, and every one before it, telling myself that it was their loss.

But today I am the one who feels like the loser. I am the one who feels like there is something broken inside of me that I will never find, a barrier between my heart, and everyone else’s. Today I feel like I am not enough. I have spent almost four months now (and honestly years before that too) making sure I am not too much. I try and provide rather than ask. I try and accommodate, I try and accept, I try and practice silence. But still,

I am not enough. I may not be a burden, but I am not irreplaceable. I am not in the sunlight.

I don’t know the reason I haven’t been able to add that tattoo to the artwork I already have. Most days I tell myself it’s because deep down I know it isn’t true and I am grateful I haven’t.

But on days like today, I can’t help but think the reason it’s never become ink on my skin that I will look at until I die, is because I know it is.