I hate clowns. Their acts do not inspire me to smile. A kid might demand, “make me a bicycle clown!” whereas I’d demand, “make me understand where both of us went wrong?”

I take my animosity toward clowns as a shadow projection, a fear that I might actually become one. That’s the root of my pain: a feeling of not enough, which I am terrified will lead me to become a middle-aged chucklehead who hides behind vibrant face paint. To a certain degree, a friend said, everyday we experience either one or a combination of “the three Ts:” terror, tedium, and tiredness. It felt unifying to know I was not alone in the fear of not adding up to my own expectations, but where were the other people trying to do the math? How often do we actually let ourselves express out loud what we are afraid of?

Waves of not enough have flooded my life lately. You are not feminine enough. You are not responsible enough. You are not loving enough. You are not doing enough. Some of these words have come from other people. A lot of them have come from within myself. They hurt equally as bad, even if they are interpretations communicated by actions: rejection, abandonment, the phone calls I didn’t receive.

When I’ve reached this point of low before, I’ve experienced guilt in allowing myself to rise up out of it and experience its adverse: what some refer to as high vibration energy. The positivity I’d put on would feel like that clown mask I never wanted, covering up my self-loathing with a show. Now, I’ve