The Impossible Standard: A Love Letter to the Girl Who Never Felt Like She Was Enough

I'm tired.

I'm so tired of feeling like I am not enough.

I have spent as long as I can remember feeling like I am unworthy. Like I don't measure up to the impossible standards that are imposed on us just because we are female.

I can remember back to primary school. Even back then, I would scrutinise things about myself, wondering if there was perhaps something wrong with me. Believe it or not, I am worse now.

I hate to admit the amount of time I spend torturing myself over my shortcomings.

I pick apart my body, my mind, my life - with a toxic dialogue that sometimes eats me up and spits me out in the worst possible way.

I know I'm not the only one.

We as women carry the weight of perfection like a second skin. We scroll through perfectly curated lives on social media and wonder why ours feels so inadequate. We compare ourselves to women half our age, feeling the sting of time on our faces, the marks of motherhood on our bodies.

We are told we need a 12-step skincare routine, a one-hour workout, ice rolling, gua sha, and dry body brushing before we can start our days. What the actual fuck.

And God forbid you don’t do all those things. Because suddenly, you’ve "let yourself go." You're tired? You're lazy. You're ageing? You're failing. You're overwhelmed? You just need to be more grateful. More positive. More productive. Smile more.

What a joke.

When did it become common practice for women to do so much?! We used to be able to focus on raising our families and keeping a safe and happy home. Remind me, why we fought so hard to go to work again?!

There is a never-ending war I wage with myself - the mirror, the scale, the camera roll. I can pick apart every inch of my body with surgical precision. Every line on my face, every blemish, every hair out of place becomes a reason to not feel good enough. I chase this idea that if I can just fix this one thing, then I’ll finally feel beautiful, confident, worthy. So I tweak, I cover, I pluck, I spend. And for a fleeting moment, I feel better. But the relief never lasts. There’s always something else. Another flaw to erase. Another standard to chase. I’ve scrutinised my skin, my hair, my nails, my stomach - like my value lives in those tiny details. And somewhere along the way, I forgot that I am not meant to be a project constantly under construction. I am allowed to just be.

We’re out here running empires, raising humans, healing generational trauma, trying to drink enough water, and still somehow feeling like we’re falling behind. Like there’s always more to do, more to prove, more to fix.

I’ve twisted myself into a thousand versions of what the world told me I should be. And you know what? I’m exhausted. I'm so damn tired of chasing approval that was never mine to begin with.

So here’s the truth I’m sitting in right now: I don’t want to keep fixing myself. I want to accept myself. I want to stop treating my body like a before-and-after project. I want to speak to myself with the same compassion I give everyone else. I want to look in the mirror and not search for something to change. I want to be free.

Because maybe the problem was never me.

Maybe the problem is a world that profits off my insecurity and thrives on keeping me small.

Not anymore.

I’m reclaiming my worth on my terms. Messy, magnificent, emotional, powerful, too loud, too soft, too much, not enough... whatever. I’m all of it. And I’m done apologising for the woman I’ve fought like hell to become.

So if you’re reading this and any of it hits you in the gut, I want you to hear me when I say this: you are not broken, and you don’t need fixing. You don’t have to earn your worth. You don’t have to hustle for it or perfect yourself into it. You already have it. Right now. As you are. Maybe the bravest thing we can do as women is to stop chasing “enough” and start living like we already are. And I’m done apologising for finally believing that. For me, and for every single one of us who’s been carrying this weight for far too long.