I Spent My Life Trying to Prove I Was Enough. I Was Wrong.
THE DAMIEN BLAAUW CODEX
CHAPTER VII
I Spent My Life Trying to Prove I Was Enough. I Was Wrong.
The Hook
I spent a large part of my life trying to prove that I was enough.
Enough for my family.
Enough for the women I loved.
Enough for my children.
Enough for the organisations that employed me.
Enough for the people whose approval I thought mattered.
Enough to be respected.
Enough to be chosen.
Enough to be loved.
Enough to belong.
I didn't know I was doing it at the time.
I thought I was simply being responsible.
Loyal.
Ambitious.
A good father.
A good partner.
A good employee.
A good man.
But there is a dangerous space between being a good man and constantly trying to prove that you are one.
I lived in that space for years.
And eventually, life became very good at exposing the cost.
Because when you spend your life trying to prove your worth to everyone else, you eventually discover that you have forgotten to establish your worth to yourself.
That is where my real battle began.
Not with the people who hurt me.
Not with the relationships that ended.
Not with the careers that changed.
Not even with the circumstances that nearly broke me.
The real battle was with the part of me that believed I had to earn the right to be enough.
The Wound
I learned early that responsibility came before comfort.
Do the chores.
Keep the peace.
Don't complain.
Carry your weight.
Make people proud.
Be useful.
Be dependable.
I became very good at carrying things.
Responsibilities.
Expectations.
Other people's problems.
Other people's emotions.
Other people's disappointments.
And somewhere along the way, I absorbed a lesson I didn't consciously choose:
If I am useful, perhaps I am valuable.
That belief followed me into adulthood.
It followed me into relationships.
It followed me into marriage.
It followed me into fatherhood.
It followed me into my career.
It followed me into rooms where I felt I had to prove that I belonged.
Achievement became evidence.
Qualifications became evidence.
Leadership became evidence.
Providing became evidence.
Sacrifice became evidence.
Loyalty became evidence.
Everything became evidence in a case I didn't realise I was constantly arguing.
The case for my own worth.
And the problem with living that way is that there is never enough evidence.
There is always another achievement.
Another responsibility.
Another person to please.
Another expectation to meet.
Another relationship to save.
Another problem to solve.
Another reason to prove yourself.
You can spend your entire life climbing a ladder only to discover that you put it against somebody else's wall.
I know what that feels like.
I've been successful and still felt inadequate.
I've been needed and still felt unseen.
I've been surrounded by people and still felt alone.
I've loved deeply and still wondered whether I was loved in the same way.
I've carried responsibility while quietly wondering who was carrying me.
And eventually, life forced me to confront something I had avoided for years:
What if I stopped trying to prove myself?
Who would I be then?
The Mic Drop Moment
Here is what took me far too long to understand:
I cannot build a healthy life while constantly negotiating against myself.
I cannot keep sacrificing my needs simply because somebody else has needs.
I cannot keep confusing loyalty with endurance.
I cannot keep confusing love with self-abandonment.
I cannot keep measuring my worth by whether somebody chooses me.
And I cannot keep handing other people the authority to decide whether I am enough.
That doesn't mean I don't care.
I care deeply.
Probably more than is occasionally good for me.
But caring about people and abandoning myself for them are two entirely different things.
I can love you without losing me.
I can forgive you without pretending nothing happened.
I can understand your pain without making it my permanent home.
I can support you without becoming responsible for your entire existence.
I can walk away without hating you.
And perhaps most importantly:
I can choose myself without believing that choosing myself makes me selfish.
That was a difficult lesson.
Because men are often taught that sacrifice is the ultimate proof of character.
Sometimes it is.
Sometimes sacrifice is simply another name for disappearing.
I know the difference now.
At least most days.
What I Know Now
I know that circumstances can break me without defining me.
I've had periods of my life where everything seemed to collapse simultaneously.
Relationships.
Finances.
Career.
Security.
Identity.
Family.
Responsibility.
There were moments when resilience wasn't some inspirational concept.
It was simply getting through the day.
Paying the bill.
Answering the phone.
Showing up for my children.
Having another difficult conversation.
Getting out of bed.
Trying again.
That's what resilience actually looked like.
Not strength without weakness.
Strength despite weakness.
I've learned that being broken isn't the same as being finished.
I've learned that a divorce can change me without defining me.
That financial failure can humble me without determining my value.
That professional rejection can hurt without becoming a verdict on my ability.
That betrayal can scar me without turning me into a bitter man.
That loneliness can expose me without destroying me.
And I've learned something else.
Achievement isn't the same as meaning.
I've achieved things I'm proud of.
I've built careers.
Led people.
Taken on responsibilities.
Earned qualifications.
Walked into rooms where I knew I had to fight harder to be heard.
But eventually I realised something uncomfortable.
You can achieve everything people told you would make you successful and still wake up wondering:
"Is this actually the life I wanted?"
That question changed the way I look at success.
I don't only want to know what I've accomplished.
I want to know who I became while accomplishing it.
Because there is no point winning the external game while losing yourself internally.
I've also learned that I cannot control what people choose.
I cannot make someone love me properly.
I cannot force someone to appreciate me.
I cannot make someone understand my intentions.
I cannot make someone stay.
I cannot make someone tell the truth.
I cannot make someone become the person I need them to be.
What I can control is what I do with that information.
That is where my power begins.
Not in controlling people.
In controlling my participation.
The Reflection
Maybe this is why getting older feels different.
When you're young, you think adulthood is about having answers.
Then life starts happening.
And you realise adulthood is often about learning which questions actually matter.
For years, I asked:
Will they choose me?
Now I ask:
Do I choose this?
I used to ask:
How do I make them understand me?
Now I ask:
Why do I need their understanding to validate what I already know?
I used to ask:
How much more can I give?
Now I ask:
Why am I giving from an empty cup?
I used to ask:
What do I need to become to be loved?
Now I ask:
Why am I negotiating my worth at all?
Those questions are uncomfortable.
They should be.
Growth isn't always becoming more confident.
Sometimes growth is becoming less willing to lie to yourself.
I've had to become honest about the ways I've participated in my own unhappiness.
Not because everything was my fault.
It wasn't.
Some things were done to me.
Some things were unfair.
Some people hurt me.
Some circumstances were outside my control.
But responsibility and blame are not the same thing.
I don't need to blame myself for what happened to me.
I do need to take responsibility for what I do next.
That is where the future lives.
The Codex Truth
I spent years believing the fight was to become enough.
It wasn't.
The fight was to stop behaving as though I wasn't.
There is a profound difference.
I don't need to become extraordinary before I deserve love.
I don't need a title before I deserve respect.
I don't need money before I deserve dignity.
I don't need somebody's approval before I deserve peace.
I don't need to be indispensable before I deserve to belong.
And I don't need to destroy myself proving that I care.
I spent years fighting for myself.
Now I'm learning something different.
I'm learning to stand with myself.
That is not arrogance.
That is not selfishness.
That is not giving up on other people.
It is finally refusing to give up on myself.
And perhaps that is what Enough has ultimately come to mean to me.
Not that I have everything figured out.
Not that I no longer hurt.
Not that I have somehow conquered every insecurity.
It means I no longer believe my worth is something I have to earn.
One Hard Truth
You can spend your entire life trying to become enough for people who were never qualified to measure your worth.
Stop handing them the ruler.
One More Hard Truth
The people you keep trying to convince may never understand you. That doesn't make your truth less true.
And the hardest one
Sometimes the person you most need to stop abandoning is yourself.
The Article Symbol
The symbol for this chapter is a man standing in front of a cracked mirror.
Not a shattered mirror.
A cracked one.
Because I don't want the image to suggest that the man is broken beyond repair.
He isn't.
The mirror is.
For years, he looked at himself through reflections created by other people.
A parent.
A partner.
A child.
An employer.
Society.
Success.
Failure.
Every reflection showed him something different.
Not because he was different.
Because the mirror was.
Now he stands in front of the same mirror without trying to fix every crack.
He simply looks at himself.
And for the first time, he doesn't ask:
"Am I enough?"
He already knows the answer.
The cracks remain.
So does he.
And perhaps that's the point.
You don't have to become flawless to become whole.
The Question I Leave You With
How much of your life have you spent trying to prove that you are enough for other people...
while never stopping long enough to ask whether you are enough for yourself?
Not your career.
Not your relationship.
Not your bank account.
Not your children.
Not your parents.
Not your friends.
You.
Who are you when nobody needs anything from you?
Who are you when nobody is watching?
Who are you when there is nothing left to prove?
Because maybe the hardest lesson life teaches us isn't how to become enough.
Maybe it's learning that we were never supposed to earn it in the first place.
THE DAMIEN BLAAUW CODEX
For the men rebuilding themselves... one hard truth at a time.
I spent years fighting to become enough.
Now I understand.
I was never supposed to become enough.
I was supposed to realise that I already was.
Till next time! Ciao! Damien.
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