I Struggle to Feel Valuable - Please Help Me

In a world full of beauty, I remain a goat - and not in the good way

Renaissance women stood in the dark a lot - image via DALL-E by the author

New siding is being installed on our house this week, and I sense my life falling to pieces. Technically, only my wedding cake topper fell to pieces, but the new siding process was to blame. Part of installing new siding is removing the old. This week, there are as many as four men at once banging on the walls of my house with hammers, and some of my books fell off the shelves.

One book landed on my wedding cake topper, breaking it in a way that — truthfully — ought to be fixed easily. But when I saw the damage, I cried and cried. I curled up on the ground until my wife was able to get me upstairs, where I laid in bed — my heart pounding, my breath shallow. I slept poorly that night.

I suspect I need to mourn something deeper, and the cake topper simply provided an excuse. In a not-completely-unrelated conversation, Robin Wilding 💎encouraged me to write an article about how I feel and what I need. I was hesitant — I’m still hesitant, as I will explain below. But I ask readers to indulge me as I work through yet another existential crisis.

I say “yet another crisis” because this is the fifth time I’ve written this article since January, each time understanding myself a bit more deeply. A low-level discomfort has permeated my life since about January — a discomfort I cannot quite put my finger on. The last iteration of this article concluded my problem is low self-worth.

While low self-worth is certainly an aspect, once again, I glimpsed a deeper meaning behind the discomfort.