Enough

"e·nough

   [ih-nuhf]  Show IPA

adjective

1.

adequate for the want or need; sufficient for the purpose orto satisfy desire: enough water; noise enough to wake the dead.

pronoun

2.

an adequate quantity or number; sufficiency.

adverb

3.

in a quantity or degree that answers a purpose or satisfies aneed or desire; sufficiently.

4.

fully or quite: ready enough.

interjection

5.

(used to express impatience or exasperation): Enough! I heard you the first time.

Origin: 
before 900; Middle English enogh, Old English genōh;  cognatewith German genug, Gothic ganohs, Old Norse nōgr;  akin to OldEnglish geneah  it suffices, Sanskrit naśati  (he) reaches

Synonyms 
1.  ample. 3.  adequately, amply, reasonably."

Tonight, I'm thinking about the word ENOUGH.  Above, you'll find the Dictionary.com definitions of the word, Enough.  The definition that I like the best, is number 3, "Adverb: In a quantity or degree that answers a purpose or satisfies a need or desire; sufficiently."  This says quite a lot to me.  I've been wondering why it just seems that I'm never "enough" for the people in my life, or those who say they love me, and would never hurt me, and yet, they have lied, because I was never a quantity or degree that answers a purpose or satisfies a need or a desire.  When looking at this word, as it pertains to love....I can also make that definition a bit smaller..." a quantity that satisfies a desire".  WOW!  That kind of hits home a bit hard.  

As an adoptee, I never felt that I was ENOUGH for my family, and my brother, Tony, made that quiet clear to me by saying things like this: when introducing me to people: "this is my ADOPTED sister, Kim", which made me feel less than a part of the family, or when he wanted to get his own way: "If you don't do _____, then Mom and Dad will send you away".  It didn't matter what was in that ______, I did it,because I believed him.  I've never really felt a part of that family, and it never made me feel as though I was enough.  To make matters worse, I also chose to push my parent's rules to see if they really WOULD send me away.  They never did, but pushing those boundaries,  caved a lot of judgement onto my head.  So, now, relating with my adopted family, I deal with a lot of judgement, and to this day, I still don't feel as though I do things well enough for them. 

What it also gave me was a huge fear of being abandoned.  In modern psychology, they call this ABANDONMENT ISSUES.  I have those in a HUGE way.  I've always been terrified that people will leave me.  Dr. Phil says it best when he says: "what we fear, we create".  So, I'm also wondering if I don't create situations that would make people want to leave me.  

I guess, that what I've always wanted was to be a quantity that satisfies a desire, in all of the relationships in my life.  I know that I am a great mom, and that I'm an excellent friend, but in the wife department, maybe not so much, because maybe, I create the issues that make my husbands want to leave me.  Maybe I get too comfortable in the relationship.  Maybe, I don't nurture those embers, that I love so much, in the way that I should.  Maybe, just maybe, I'm not enough...OUCH...that kind of hurts in a myriad of ways.  

Which brings me to the question of how to fix that.  How does one become "a quantity that satisfies a desire"?  What does that take?  Is it even POSSIBLE to do it?  I don't know.  I'm willing to look into it, and find out.  But then, if that's the case, then that puts the fault of both divorces on my head.  I'm willing to take the fault if it is truly on my head, but I'm not so sure of that either.  I think that it takes both parties to fan those flames into embers.  When a wife doesn't feel as though she is "ENOUGH" for her husband, said wife will soon give up.  Maybe that's been my issue.  I gave up, and in giving up, I stopped fanning those embers to make my marriage work.  But then again, I think, wait...it's not all on me.  When I told my husband that I needed for him to spend more time at home with me, and with the kids, he would tell me that work was more important.  How does a wife compete with her husband's job?  That's our income, it's what puts the roof over our heads and the food on our table, and the clothing on our backs.  I couldn't compete with it.  Plus, when your husband makes it perfectly clear to you that you will always play second fiddle to the job, then you just deal with it.  I guess that I didn't deal with it very well.  I went inside of myself.  I stopped fanning those flames, because it felt to me that it wasn't very important for him either.  He has never understood this...he thinks that I just gave up.  He doesn't want to believe that his actions, inactions, and his words weren't to hurt me, but to tell me how HE felt.  He didn't really care about how I felt.  I just wanted him to spend time with me...I wanted us to do things together....without worrying about his job, or if we'd be pulled away from whatever we were doing, so that we could just relax and have fun.  It was never relaxing or fun to go away...he always had that damned computer with him, so he could check in OFTEN...he wanted to be in contact with his job.  I'd see other people who he worked with that didn't take their computers on their anniversary trips with them, or on family trips...he was the only one.  No one else on that cruise ship went into emergency manager mode when some idiot tried to bomb some plane in CHICAGO, when we were in Key West....and by the way, plane bombings have nothing to do with my ex-husband's job.  He got angry with me, because once he went into JOB MODE, I just grabbed my book, and my cigarettes, and went out on the deck, to read, smoke, and drink a beer.  He could NOT understand why I was no longer in lovey-dovey mode, as HE was now ready to be that, after he talked to the security officer on the ship....REALLY?  Was that even necessary?  I didn't think so.  He didn't work for the Feds anymore, nor did he work for Homeland Security anymore...and we were in the CARIBBEAN OCEAN for goodness sakes!  It wasn't like he could have gotten OFF of the ship...and truly, I did ask myself why he didn't just get off the ship and fly home once we got to Cozumel, if it was so important for him to be at WORK for this incident.  

So, what this all leads me to, is this...I just want to be enough for someone else to love me, as I am, without trying to change who I am, and how I do things, without trying to criticize my every choice for myself.  I just want to be "a quantity that satisfies a desire.