I watched you the other day make a mistake. You thought no one was listening, but I was. You muttered, "stupid," under your breath, and I saw the tears in your eyes. You thought no one was watching, but I was.
You desire to be the best version of you possible.
The best worker, sister, friend, daughter, writer...
You reach and reach, but you are never enough.
There's always someone else one step ahead, someone a little better, prettier, thinner, faster.
But to be the irreplaceable, the best version of yourself, that's your goal. It's not a label anyone but yourself has placed on you, calling you, seemingly defining you. You are not enough until you've gone above and beyond the call of duty.
If someone calls you out, tells you you can't, gives you limits -- you will go beyond them, even if it kills you. If they tell you you're less, you try and try until you can prove them wrong.
This has been all your life. This is how you live. You are always reaching.
Always.
And yet you always seem to fail.
Someone told you the other day that you did a crappy job. I watched the tears of anger and defeat fill your eyes, anger at yourself. I saw it in your expression. "I could have done better." And I watched you work furiously to show them you could do better, that you were irreplaceable.
This has been your DNA since you were little. Always you want to to be better than you are, work harder than before. You feed off praise, off validation, off knowing that one day you can be enough.



Yet no matter how hard you try, you still never are.
Dear over-achiever who feels your struggling to keep your identity, the tough-girl, I can do it, image.
You can stop striving because your identity does not rest in your productivity. What did today or what you fail to do tomorrow, does not define your worth or make it any less. You strive and strive, falling and falling. But your failings do not define you.
Dear over-achiever, I know exactly how you are feeling.



Because I'm writing this letter to me.

I am that girl mutter stupid to herself under her breath. I am the girl who rests her identity and worth on what she did do...and what she failed to do. I measure who I am by who I can be.
But when I do, I fall short.
Over and over and over.
Dear over-achiever
Right here.
Right now.
I'm giving you permission to move on. You were not made to carry this weight. You were not made to live under this crushing load.
You were made to be free.

Dear over-achiever,
I look at you every day in the mirror and sometimes I don't like who's looking back.
But dear over-achiever,
stop looking over your shoulder at what you didn't do but start looking forwards to what you can.

I am giving you permission to keep moving forwards, to asking for help, to letting go, to being okay with not being able to do it all. You are not superwoman.
And
dear
over-achiever.
I'm giving you permission do be okay with that, to being okay with being the best possible, amazing version of yourself...and not letting any one else stop you.
You're acting like a captive.
I long to see you free.