The first time I realized I wasn't enough, I was a tiny little kid and my parents had just brought my brother home.

Once he stopped being noisy and I could comprehend him as a little human being, and realized that the reason my parents were being so weird about him was that he was staying, my heart sank.

I didn't have the words then, but I do now--I am not enough. I wasn't enough for them, they needed to supplement me with someone who was everything I was not.

I am not enough was my silent refrain from then on. When I got to the age when I finally started dating, it was so ingrained that I was unsurprised when my partners all had partners besides me. I was not enough for anyone, after all.

I was bothered by it, always, but quashed my fear and my dismay. I knew that I could never be enough for anyone, and I couldn't expect them to love only me, who was so obviously lacking. So I kept a crucial part of myself away from my partners. I never committed myself because I figured that even if I gave the relationship full weight, there would always be someone else, something else. I was afraid of the thing I knew to be true being proved for the world to see: I am not enough.

And then came a relationship in which i was convinced of the impossible--for her, I seemed to be enough. And for the first time in my life, someone was enough for me. I committed myself fully, and didn't so much as seriously look at anyone else sexually for a long time.

But it ended, and i went back to not being enough.

I'm not sure I'll ever be enough for anyone ever again. It's sad, but true--once a partner expresses serious interest in someone else, there is a piece of my emotional self I take back if I've trusted them enough to give it to them.

Right now, I'm struggling to remain open, struggling to keep trusting. It's hard. It's very very hard. It's being proved again that I am not enough and I'm starting to wonder why I even try. I am being told that I am enough with one breath and being told how wonderful this other person is with the next. I'm trying to remember that I do matter.

Making this more complicated is that my new medication has shown me just how, ah, vociferous my sex drive can be. I thought I had a pretty high sex drive before, but lately I've become utterly insatiable. This is not a bad thing, it's just complicating things a bit.

I breathe in, and out again. I ride my newly awakened sexuality like an expert bronco rider, knowing that it's only the next second, the next millisecond that matters.

I might be enough.

Some day.

New audio (click the headphone icon next to the title to listen in Realaudio):

7 years
walking from Hickory Hill
Jericho
a brand new dagger

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