Good enough

I've been listening to the new Evanescence album since I got it yesterday, and it strikes me how yet again, they've put out an album that really resonates with me. The music is good to listen to, but the feeling and tone and lyrics, they're stirringly familiar. Yes, granted, not everything applies. Much of this album was inspired by attempting to escape from abusive relationships, and I've not been in that situation. Yet, bits of lyrics here and there, a line, a phrase, a verse, even large swaths of certain songs, they sound familiar, like bits of my heart, poured out at different times in the past couple of years, different situations and emotional states I've been in.

My favorite song right now off the new album (subject to change at any moment, of course) is "Good Enough." Large chunks of it sound like I could've written them, if I knew how to write music.

Listening to this song tonight, I realized how much I've hurt myself by my own expectations. I've spent a lot of my life expecting not to be loved or accepted. And I realize now that by not expecting love, I left myself unable to cope with it, confused when it came my way. Looking back, there have been times where I've unintentionally tried to warp it into a less pure, less sincere love, times when I've actually enabled and encouraged negative emotions and events without realizing it, inviting and almost even welcoming bad treatment because I didn't believe that I deserved love without strings attached, love without a penalty, a price to pay for love I didn't feel worthy to receive.

I've made great strides, though. I've made a lot of progress, and I've realized that I'm not inadequate, that I'm not that outcast little girl anymore. I'm a different person, and I can change -- I can choose to be someone tomorrow that I wasn't before. I have value, as much as the next person, and I'm entitled to my share of happiness and love and sweetness and light.

I am good enough. I always have been inside, I suppose, but I had to realize it to make it the truth. I deserve love. I deserve happiness. I'm worth loving, worth sacrificing for, worth the energy and effort expended on me by those who care about me. My wants and needs are just as important as anyone else's. If I want something, I can work toward it, and if I don't want something, I can say no to it, because what I want is important, too. My opinion, my feelings, they count. What I want matters, and it's better to cause temporary annoyance than to give up myself, to submit and be hollow, a worthless, empty plaything to serve others' wants at the expense of my own self-worth.

Y'know, it's odd, having confidence and a sense of my own value after a lifetime of feeling unworthy. It's a really good feeling, though.