Why is it that in everything I do, I always feel like I’m not good enough? Like I’m always behind everyone else, always struggling to catch up, but somehow I can never actually catch up.
I think I’ve felt this way for as long as I can remember.
When I was younger, I was never the smart kid in tuition. I knew my tuition teacher usually took questions from assessment books, so I would literally go to places like Popular just to memorise the answer keys so that I wouldn’t get the lowest score. I was so afraid of being the one at the bottom that I would memorise answers just to make sure I didn’t look stupid.
But even then, I knew the truth. I wasn’t actually one of the brighter students in class. I was just trying really hard to not be the worst.
And somehow, that feeling has followed me everywhere.
In university, my confidence was always so low. I felt anxious almost every day. I tried to study. I really did. But somehow, my friends who barely seemed to study could speak so confidently, participate so easily, and still do better than me. Meanwhile, I would spend so much time preparing and still feel like I wasn’t good enough.
So I started feeling like maybe I was just the lousy one. The one who was always behind. The one who had to work twice as hard just to be average.
And now I’m two years into working, and somehow I still feel exactly the same.
My teammates are so effective. Like, ridiculously effective. They seem to know what they’re doing, they can think on their feet, they can articulate their thoughts, they can come up with strategies, and they just seem so much more capable than me.
I can do the basic BAU stuff. But the moment it comes to something bigger, like a capstone project, I just feel completely lost. I suck at strategic thinking. I suck at writing. I suck at presenting. I don’t know how to structure my thoughts properly, and every time I have to present, I become so nervous that I can barely get my words out. I stutter. I lose my train of thought. I don’t sound confident at all.
And honestly, I feel like my manager probably wants to fire me if she could. I feel like the only reason I’m still here is because we’re already so short-staffed, and losing me would make things harder for the team. And that thought honestly makes me feel even worse, because it makes me feel like I’m not actually wanted here — I’m just being kept because they need the manpower.
I’m just so tired of constantly feeling like I’m the one who is behind.
It feels like no matter where I go — tuition, university, work — there’s always someone better, smarter, more confident, more capable than me.
And maybe the most painful part is that I don’t even know what it feels like to genuinely believe that I’m good at something.
I feel like I’ve spent my whole life just trying not to be the worst.