I've been proving my worth for 40 years and I'm done
There's something I've never said out loud quite like this before. For most of my life, I've been the giver. The one who shows up, takes on the extra thing, says yes when I'm already full, keeps going when I'm running on empty. And for a long time I told myself it was just who I am. A generous person. Someone who cares. But recently I've been sitting with something harder. What if it wasn't generosity? What if, underneath all of it, I was scared? Scared that if I stopped giving, stopped being useful, stopped taking on everyone else's stuff — they'd leave. Or they'd stop loving me. Or they'd realise I wasn't actually worth keeping around. Not a conscious thought. Nothing that dramatic. Just a quiet hum underneath everything. A constant low-level proving. Look how much I do. Look how capable I am. Look how little I ask for. Because if I ask for too much, I'm selfish. And selfish people get left. I grew up in a house with a lot of noise. My dad was an alcoholic. There was domestic violence. And when things are that unstable, you learn to survive. You become useful. You become the capable one. The strong one. The one who holds it together so everyone else can fall apart. I was a child and that was the role I took on And then I grew up. And I kept doing it. Because it was the only way I knew how to feel like I was enough. When I was living with my mum a few years ago, she was going through a hard time and leaning on me heavily. And I just kept taking it on. And taking it on. And taking it on. Not because she was forcing me. Because somewhere in my nervous system, saying no felt like a threat to the relationship. If I'm not giving, what am I? She's actually admitted since I moved out that she leaned on me because I was there. And I let her. Because I thought I was being selfless. I wasn't. I was proving my worth. There's a difference. The exhaustion I've been carrying recently — and it has been a lot — brought this into focus in a way it hasn't been before. Because I got to a point where I had nothing left. Not just tired. Empty. Not even being any version of myself, never mind the best version.