Tiny, Red Bubbles of Worth…
You know what I am talking about. The little red bubbles that appear on your Home Screen. Alerting you to the fact that you have so many texts or emails.
Well, lately, the bubbles aren’t there. It isn’t that the technology isn’t working…it is that no one is texting me. (Well, except for work).
It is always when life changes that I notice the absence of these tiny red circles as a taunting. All other times, I am grateful when there is no one seeking me out. But when I feel rejected, sad, alone, lonely, their absence vexes me and hurts me.
I guess even phone apps can take the shape of external validation. One more crutch that I didn’t know I needed, or was even using.
Why do little tiny circles of red with a number make me feel important, valid, whole?
The same thing happens with my email but it’s easier to dismiss those because so much of what is in my inbox is advertisement for some thing that I don’t need, a marketing ploy from someone I don’t know or want to know. But those text bubbles! Those tiny text bubbles loom large in my head.
Why has no one reached out?
Why am I not on anyone’s mind?
Why am I not important enough?
I never acknowledged I felt this way until today. It was after I looked again for (well, I am not going to actually name the number of times I looked because it makes me look pathetic) some sort of external validation, in the form of a text bubble.
And as my feet hit the trail, I realized and admitted to myself that these tiny bubbles are just the latest example of my innate manner to seek things outside myself as solutions to inside problems.
And so the trail was pounded with frustration and some despair that I do not seem to ever be able to figure it out with any kind of lasting peace or comfort, that it is never outside me, always within. And there will never be enough tiny text bubbles to make me feel ok, worthwhile or loved. That is and always has been an inside job that I have wholly assigned to others. And they have failed me every time because it was never theirs to begin with…and I know this to be supremely true.
