Trauma is Real

As an overachiever, I constantly push myself harder than I should. When many think of an overachiever, they think of someone who achieves success and goes above the norm. However, overachieving for me looks messy. A lot of late nights pushing myself to the brink of exhaustion. On the outside, I look superhuman (or so I am told). I get many ‘compliments’ “Wow, I am so proud of you!” and “You’re such an inspiration!”. I know that these are meant to lift me and feel a sense of self-accomplishment; however that is not how it is delivered.

It’s not their fault. It’s how my brain thinks. In my poem ‘The Overachiever,’ I talk about my struggles because of the constant push towards perfection. It is not because I think I am better than anyone. It is the exact opposite. I feel like somehow I don’t measure up to others and how I could be doing better than I am. Growing up, I was taught that I couldn’t measure up to what my brothers were if I wasn’t perfect. Maybe that wasn’t meant to be the message, but that is how I read it. In the poem, I talk about the person being off somewhere else, and she (my mother) is. Again I sit, and I want to overachieve to get her attention even though we have been no contact for almost a year.

I always wonder what it would be like to have a family who wanted you and didn’t give you away like a broken toy they received and no one wanted (adoption from anyone was never on the table). Because of the little girl in my head begging for what she couldn’t have, I take on more than I should, causing complete exhaustion. Yet, I tell myself I am not doing enough! I tell myself I am not trying hard enough and that I am a failure because, for some reason, my brain has told me that is how I will get noticed by my family, and they would want me. That after all these years, this would somehow make a difference.

This comes to tonight’s shortcoming (even though it really shouldn’t be). As some of you may know, I am in college working towards my Master’s degree. I submitted my final essay for a class called “Leadership and Ethical Decision-Making.”. I got 1223 of the 1235 points possible, making the final grade a 99.03%. Wonderful right? Not to me. Why? Because trauma has taught me that I failed. I am sitting crying and beating myself up over twelve points! Almost like I can hear my stepdad telling me what a big piece of crap I am because I couldn’t get those last twelve points. Or the sting of his girlfriend striking me because I am crying for not doing good enough. That it is my fault, I failed.

I can feel the little girl in me being so disappointed that I failed her again because being perfect will make her mom love her. The point of this article isn’t to get praise or make you feel sorry for me. It is to raise awareness that the way you make your children feel follows them into adulthood and that therapy doesn’t make it disappear. It helps, but it doesn’t go away. I should be happy that I got a 99% on a class for my Master’s degree, but I feel like I failed. The adult in me knows I did great, but I can’t silence those thoughts. Words have more power than we give them credit for. We all need to remember that before we interact with others, no matter who they are.



Originally posted here: Trauma is Real