No one deserves to be forgotten

A while back I spoke on the inherently human need for validation and it's something that I've really been thinking a lot about today. Not just the need for validation, but why we feel the need for it. I was talking to a friend earlier and, in the middle of my rambling text messages, I touched on something that I hadn't really thought about before...

When I was a kid, I often felt ignored. From a very young age I knew that if I didn't speak loudly or repeat myself over and over again that I simply wouldn't be heard. My siblings always seemed to shine much brighter than I did. It's something that, as I got older, I noticed I still did. If I were with a group of friends and trying to say something to get people's attention I would either keep raising my voice in order to be heard or simply just keep repeating the same point again and again. 

As I got even older and, let's be honest, maybe a little withdrawn, all of those ignored attempts at attention and validation turned into one simple phrase: just forget I said anything. It became my own personal defense mechanism. If after many attempts to make people hear me had failed, I would just tell them to forget it. Nowadays I tend to use it particularly when I feel as though I've bothered someone in my attempts to be heard. 

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. Just forget about."

Or, on the flip side, when I've been trying to get a point across that it doesn't seem is sinking in.

"Never mind! Just forget it!"

How many times have you said something similar yourself? Probably a lot, right? The attention, or lack thereof, that we receive as children turns us into the adults that we are. When other people shine bright you either have to try and outshine them or simply dim out of existence... and that's what I've been scared of lately. As silly as it is, I'm worried that if I don't keep myself on someone's radar, that they'll simply forget that I exist at all... that I'll just disappear.

All of this talk reminded me of the Buffy episode from Season 1 where the school is being "haunted" and terrorized by an unseen entity until it's revealed (spoiler alert) that it's actually a student who was ignored so badly that she became invisible. Yes that is science fiction and obviously not physically possible, but the psychology of it is real. Not everyone feels the need to be the center of attention or life of the party, but everyone wants to feel as though they matter to someone... that they won't just be forgotten and disappear.

"No one deserves to be forgotten

No one deserves to fade away

No one should flicker out

Or have any doubt

That it matters that they are here

No one deserves to disappear"

There's a lot of poignant quotes from Tony award-winning musical Dear Evan Hansen that I could throw into this post, but that one right there hits the nail on the head. Sometimes I wake up in the morning with just that one section repeating over and over again, almost as if my subconscious is trying to remind me that I matter when I feel as though I'm starting to disappear.

So how can we help ourselves when we've spent our whole lives trying to remind other people that we exist? Well, that friend I was talking to earlier made an excellent point. She said, "I think it’s very hard to put yourself in the middle of your life. I know that I can’t do that, but I don’t have that person that fits perfectly in the place. Everyone is the center of their own life."

I was completely floored by this concept, but it's so true. It goes along with "love yourself so others can love you too". We get so desperate for attention in order to receive the validation that we think we need to the point where our lives revolve around the people we're seeking the validation from, as opposed to just living our lives for ourselves... seeking that validation internally. You can't always rely on others to make you happy. Isn't that something that we're taught?

It's a strange concept when you put it in terms of needing to feel as though you matter to others, but if you matter to yourself, then who cares what anyone else thinks, right?

Is it really that simple?

- DB