On being a loser

I am a loser.

Now before you try and rescue me from that thought, that potential reality, and tell me all the ways that I’m ‘winning’ I want you to feel what it feels like in your body when you read that.

For me, it feels like a heavy rock in my stomach that migrates to my chest, the same place where anxiety to DO MORE lives. The same place that tells me I’m running out of time to prove that I’m, in fact, not a loser.

Laying in bed till noon on a sunny Sunday definitely makes me a loser. My messy house and drooping plants make me a loser. My addiction to sugar and pizza are not the habits of winners. I haven’t done a real workout in months, haven’t finished projects, haven’t decided what’s next, haven’t made goals.

I’m 36, unmarried and without kids. What is your judgment of that? Is that a way you are winning?

This voice of a bully- one I encountered in childhood from my family, my classmates, teachers, coaches. It says do more to be liked, create more, accomplish more, push until you hurt. Do more to be like the winners.

Who’s winning? Every thought there just goes to comparison. Comparing my insides to everyone’s outsides. Who is really free? That’s my actual job in this life. To be free of comparison, embody freedom.

So I’ll lay here in bed as long as it takes. To play with this thought without trying to prove it wrong, to feel it through so it has the ability to move, to allow it to be. No goal, no outcome.

The only way I lose is to run and lose my connection with my true self.