Are We All Just Collectively Feeling Like We're Not Enough, or Is That Just Me?

I contemplate my value while trapped in bedtime purgatory, wondering if I'll ever outrun the ghost of my 80% disappointment

My head hits the pillow, positioned between both kids. It's our evening routine - I tickle their backs, we listen to acoustic music (because apparently, I'm that mom now), my eldest tells me about his day, while the youngest dozes off. Then we rinse and repeat, switching from an acoustic Taylor Swift playlist to whatever pop-turned-acoustic playlist that Google thinks will knock them out faster, and I repeat seventy-billion times that "you need to go to sleep" while I mentally run through the hundreds of things I still need to do before I finally get to face-plant into my own bed.

This has become my daily berating session. The highlight reel of failure, if you will. I consider all the tasks I've put off, all the ones I never got around to, all the ways I feel I didn't measure up to some false expectation that I definitely created myself. I worry about how I didn't have enough time with my kids, and how my husband and I barely exchanged more than 5 sentences despite working a meter across from one another. (Nothing says romance like two exhausted adults sending Slack messages instead of actually speaking.)

The berating session continues until my eyes become heavy, and I'm interrupted by the soft snores of my eldest next to me. Realizing it's my time to sneak out and get back to the never-ending task list that I'm too fucking tired to complete, my brain softly whispers... you're not enough. Your value is decided by how much you achieve; how busy you are; how hard you hustle...

And I realize, that's the most exhausting part of it all. Knowing that no matter how much I give, it will always feel like it's just short of enough. (Is this what they mean by "you can't pour from an empty cup"? Because my cup is so empty it's practically a desert.)

I recently sent an SOS signal out to my mom (code for: help, I'm drowning in my own expectations), and I used the analogy of something that we poke fun at now, but something that was very true of my childhood. Whenever I got 80% in my tests, I'd come home excited, share it with my dad, and he'd look at it, shrug and say... "but that means you don't know 20% of your work... that's a fifth of your work!"

I think that was his way of keeping me hungry, or maybe humble? I actually don't know. But what it created was this overachieving monster who is so desperate for validation that I am constantly chasing the high of being told I'm enough. That I am so very good, that I am machine... and I lose sight of the why, and forget to enjoy the right here, right now. I forget to pause, breathe in, and close my eyes while I listen to the world pass me by.

I feel like I am just missing the mark by 20%... every day. And it's fucking exhausting.

Making a mess of it,