“Ugh. All I see on my newsfeed is my friends getting married and having babies.”
– Almost every 20 something (including myself)
This month, my heart’s been cracked open wider than ever before. As the Great Surgeon has been looking through the caverns of my heart, he found some deadly substances: insecurity and jealousy.
I’m 28 years old. For more than a few years, stories on my facebook newsfeed read nothing but news of my friends getting engaged….. or married…..or pregnant!
I’ll never forget when I saw that first “life progression” post: One of my middle school friends posted that she was engaged. (This was before facebook gave you the option of boldly and clearly sharing the news with a picture of an engagement ring) I stared at the computer screen for what seemed like an hour, my insides feeling like warm (and gross) JELL-O.
That’s when it began – the comparison of the “progression” of my life to others. Through comparing, I was actively entangling myself in a sticky web of self- deprecating, self- harming lies. They ran through my head time after time after time…
“They’re engaged, why aren’t you?”
They’ve been married for two years….where’s YOUR husband?”
“They’ve just had a baby….will you even be able to HAVE a baby by the time you’re married (that is, if you ever DO get married?)”
Trying to answer these ridiculous questions, I was operating under the wrong impression that I had to be engaged, married, and have children in order to “progress” my life, in order to be complete.
Still under the wrong impression, I just wasn’t able to rejoice in the good news that my friends wanted to share (and that they SHOULD share!)
Stuck in the sticky web of these thoughts, although just for milliseconds, just teeny tiny whispers, eventually bubbled into nasty poisons: insecurity and jealousy. Under this false impression, insecurity about myself and my “life progression” began to rise.
Read Part 2 for the conclusion!
