This has been something that’s weighed heavily on me for some time now. For as far back as I can remember (and I have a memory like an elephant), I’ve always been strangely “praised” for things and placed up on this pedestal. I’m not sure when I was put here or by whom, but many people have added to it. Friends, family, teachers, employers, peers, and even strangers. It’s tough and the pressure is crazy!

This pedestal  is towering. I had no clue it existed let alone me being on it. The comparisons, the responsibility, the pressure. The pressure of disappointing others, when I’m already weighted with all of the self expectation. The pressure of failing others, even though I’m not sure how I’d fail them and from what. It’s crazy. It’s like an unspoken task that people load off on me and at some point I pick it up and bear the burden of completing it with no actual guidelines for successful completion.

I’ve never shared this with anyone besides my thoughts being left in a journal, until a few months ago. I tried explaining to a male friend if he knew what it was like or if I was crazy enough to believe it existed. I think a part of me hoped that he’d say it doesn’t and I’d made it all up. He didn’t. He agreed. He understood. And in some ways he added to it.

The pressures of being placed on a pedestal. Being placed so high up that you fear looking over the edge for answers, you fear falling for the sake of others and not yourself, you fear it all and you don’t even understand how you’ve gotten here. I’ve been meaning to write about this and with life, all of the points I wanted to speak on just left me. And I can’t recall all of those details from that conversation with him, nor can I find that journal entry (so much for my elephant memory right). It’s the one topic I didn’t jot down on a pad, in my phone, on a calendar, on my tablet or my laptop. So then it hit me… Duh! You didn’t write it down, because why accept it? Why carry it any further.

Now I’m not sure if it’ll work at all, but I’m willing to give it a shot.

-Viola Constance