CATEGORY: Little Pieces Of Life

Learning About Myself

Anthi worked as a secretary at a shipping company. She really liked her job, felt comfortable with the people around her, and had built a daily life that, most of the time, she genuinely enjoyed. Some evenings, after leaving the office, she would meet up with her friends. Sometimes they would go to the cinema, sometimes they would sit at a small taverna for some meze, and quite often what began as a simple coffee would turn into hours of conversation and laughter.

She loved those moments. She had only a few friends, but they were people she had chosen and felt close to. She also enjoyed spending time on her own, reading, watching a film, or simply enjoying the quiet of her home. Her life was not empty. It was filled with people, interests, beautiful moments, and things she looked forward to.

There were evenings, however, when a sense of sadness would creep in. Usually when she returned home and the day grew quiet. At those times, she would think about how much she wanted someone by her side. Not simply because she did not want to be alone, but because she missed companionship. She wanted to love and be loved, to share with someone all those small, everyday things that eventually become such a big part of a relationship.

And along with that desire came a question that hurt even more:

“What am I doing wrong?”

No matter how many self-help books she read, the answer never came. Every so often, she would discover another one promising to help her understand what was keeping her from the relationship she wanted. She read about self-confidence, relationships, meeting new people, learning to love herself more. Some ideas seemed useful and she tried to put others into practice, but the same question kept returning.

“What am I doing wrong?”

And the more she searched for the answer, the more she began searching for what was wrong with her. Maybe she needed to be more sociable. Maybe she was not spontaneous enough. Maybe she was too selective. Maybe she needed to change the way she met people or give them more of a chance.

Without realizing it, she had begun to treat herself like a problem that needed to be solved. And every so often, the opinions of others were added to the doubts she already carried. Especially those of her family.

After the most recent family dinner, Anthi got into her car and lit her tenth cigarette of the evening. She had smoked the previous nine while listening to her parents and relatives, sometimes mocking her and sometimes criticizing her because, at thirty-five, she still had not started a family. One told her that time was passing, another that she was far too selective, while someone else made sure to remind her that “if she were a little smarter about these things, she would have a husband and children by now.”

She was angry all the way home.

Not only with them. She was angry with herself because, once again, she had sat there, listened to their comments, and tried to smile so as not to spoil the mood.

As soon as she got home, she put down her bag, took off her shoes, and went straight to the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of wine and lit another cigarette, trying to calm down after that exhausting family dinner. She sat there alone for quite some time, doing nothing. Their words were still going around in her mind. And with them came the same familiar question:

“What am I doing wrong?”

The next day began with a small reckoning of the night before. Twenty cigarettes, three glasses of wine, a terrible mood, and a reflection in the mirror that did not exactly thrill her. She made some coffee and sat in the kitchen, trying to understand how one family dinner had managed to upset her so much.

It was not the first time she had heard comments like these. She had heard them again and again. And yet, every time she left, she carried the same doubts home with her.

But that morning, something bothered her even more than her relatives’ words: how easily they could ruin her mood and make her doubt herself.

Lost in thought, she jumped when the doorbell rang. For a moment, she wondered who it could be, until she remembered her usual Sunday coffee with her best friend. After everything that had happened the night before, she had completely forgotten about it.

She opened the door and found her standing there with a paper bag filled with freshly baked chocolate croissants.

“I think you need these more than the coffee today,” her friend said as soon as she saw her.

Anthi smiled for the first time that morning. It was not long before the two of them were sitting in the kitchen, coffees in front of them and the bag open in the middle of the table. And somewhere between the first sip of coffee and the first croissant, Anthi began telling her everything that had happened the night before.

On Monday, as they did every week, the two of them went to the studio where they took pottery classes. Anthi usually enjoyed those hours. She liked working with clay, letting her hands create while her mind became quiet for a while.

That afternoon, however, she was different. She was withdrawn and distracted. Her hands worked almost mechanically, while her mind kept returning to the family dinner, to the comments she had heard, and to the conversation she had had with her friend the day before.

At some point, she looked at what she was trying to make. She had corrected it so many times that the clay had begun to lose its original shape. She pressed it on one side, changed it on the other, and each time she found something else she did not like.

She stopped for a moment and looked at her hands.

Perhaps, without realizing it yet, she was doing with the clay exactly what she had been doing with herself for years.

The instructor, who was walking around the tables checking on everyone’s progress, had already noticed how distracted she was. At one point, she stopped beside her and watched for a moment as Anthi kept trying to correct the clay.

She smiled and said:

“You know, Anthi, not everything we create needs to be constantly corrected. Sometimes we simply need to see what is in front of us and work with it.”

Anthi looked up at her. The instructor had already moved on to the next table, but those words stayed with her.

She continued working with the clay, but what she had just heard had already taken her thoughts somewhere else. Over the past few days, she had been searching again and again for all the things she might need to change about herself. Her introversion, the way she related to people, the fact that she had only a few friends, even the choices she had made in her relationships.

As though somewhere there was another version of herself—more outgoing, more spontaneous, less selective—and if only she could become more like that woman, perhaps her life would be different.

Until that moment, she had spent far more time trying to discover what needed fixing than trying to understand who she really was.

And perhaps that was the question she had never thought to ask.

Not what she needed to change about herself, but who she really was beyond everything other people had taught her to believe about herself.

She returned home deep in thought. The instructor’s words were still going around in her mind and, this time, instead of opening yet another book in search of answers, she took a few blank sheets of paper and sat down at the table.

She began writing down everything she believed about herself, without trying to make it sound better and without trying to correct it.

She wrote that she was introverted, sensitive, perhaps sometimes insecure. That she had only a few friends, that she did not enjoy large groups, and that she needed time before she felt comfortable with someone. She also wrote that she was selective in relationships and that she could not easily stay with someone simply because she did not want to be alone.

But as the words began filling the page, she noticed something she had never considered before. Almost every characteristic came with a judgement attached to it. Introversion became a disadvantage, sensitivity became weakness, having only a few friends became proof that she was not sociable enough, and being selective became a possible explanation for why she did not have a partner.

And then she began to wonder, not whether these things were true, but who had decided they were flaws.

She also wrote that she felt disappointed and sad about not having a partner in her life. Companionship was something she genuinely wanted, and there were times when its absence hurt. She wanted someone with whom she could share her everyday life, make plans, love and feel loved.

She did not want to convince herself that simply because she could be happy on her own, she did not need a relationship. She wanted one. And sometimes she felt deeply sad that she did not have one.

Until then, however, she had connected that sadness with the belief that something must be wrong with her. As though not having found a partner yet was proof that she was not attractive enough, interesting enough, sociable enough, or good enough at relationships.

Perhaps, though, she could want something she did not yet have, feel sad about it, and still not reject herself simply because it had not happened yet.

When she went back and reread what she had written, something caught her attention. Every time she referred to companionship, her desire appeared almost as a deficiency. Something was missing from her life. Something she had not yet managed to achieve. Something she was waiting to happen before she could finally feel that her life had taken the shape it was supposed to have.

But what exactly was missing?

A partner, or a particular image of life that she had learned to consider complete?

For the first time, she began to separate her own desire from everything that had been built around it.

Anthi wanted a partner. That was real, and she did not need to deny it or pretend that his absence did not make her sad. But over the years, that desire had become tangled up with expectations, social pressures, comparisons, and that persistent “should” that made her feel that, at thirty-five, she was already running late.

She began to realize that she had become trapped in a vicious circle. She wanted a relationship, the relationship did not come, its absence became a personal failure, and that sense of failure became yet another reason to doubt herself.

Each time she returned to the same question:

“What do I need to change about myself in order to have what I’m missing?”

Perhaps, though, the question she needed to ask was no longer what was missing.

Perhaps it was what was already within her that she had never learned to recognize.

From that evening on, Anthi began observing herself more closely. Not to discover yet another flaw that needed fixing, but to better understand the way she thought, reacted, and related to what was happening around her.

She began noticing the patterns of behaviour that repeated themselves in her everyday life, the thoughts that kept returning, and the inner conflicts that troubled her most.

She noticed how often she sought other people’s approval before trusting her own choices. How easily one remark could make her question something that, only minutes earlier, had felt right. How many times she said, “I don’t care what they think,” only to return home and replay a conversation over and over again in her mind.

She also began to recognize her contradictions. She wanted to live according to her own wishes, but she was afraid of disappointing others. She wanted a relationship, but she did not want to be in one simply so she could say she was no longer alone. She loved quietness and her small circle of people, yet sometimes pressured herself to become more outgoing because she had learned that this was how she “should” be.

She also noticed how harsh she could be with herself. A mistake did not remain simply a mistake; it could easily become proof that she was not capable enough. A disappointment became a personal failure, and rejection could send her searching for all the things that might not be good enough about her.

It rarely occurred to her that something might simply not have worked out, without that saying anything about her worth.

Even in her relationships, she began to recognize a familiar pattern. She often tried to understand what the other person wanted before asking herself what she wanted. She chose her words carefully, sometimes avoided expressing her dissatisfaction, and could adapt more than she truly wanted to because she was afraid of being seen as difficult or demanding.

And when a new relationship did not develop any further, instead of wondering whether the person in front of her was right for her, her first thought was usually whether she had done something wrong.

Gradually, she began to recognize something even deeper. Many of the things she considered her own weaknesses carried the voices of people who had been in her life for a very long time.

Her introversion had been called antisocial behaviour. Her sensitivity, overreaction. Her need to think before making a decision, insecurity. Her choice not to settle easily in a relationship had been interpreted as being difficult or overly demanding.

After hearing the same judgements for so many years, she had stopped asking herself whether she agreed with them. She had incorporated them into the way she saw herself.

Perhaps the hardest thing to recognize was how often she had tried to earn an acceptance she had not felt while growing up. To be good enough, pleasant enough, right enough, so that eventually there would be nothing left for anyone to criticize.

But that “enough” never had an end. Every time she came close, the bar moved a little higher.

And somewhere along the way, Anthi began to understand that perhaps the greatest burden she carried was not the fact that she did not have a partner at thirty-five.

It was that she had learned to use everything that did not turn out the way she wanted as yet another piece of evidence against herself.

For the first time, she did not immediately try to change what she was discovering. She simply observed it. She tried to understand where it had come from, when it appeared, and how much space it occupied in her choices.

And through that process, little by little, she began to distinguish the woman she truly was from the woman she had spent years believing she was supposed to become.

Each time she returned to pottery class and her hands touched the clay, Anthi felt as though she were coming a little closer to herself. In that quiet space, she did not need to explain anything or prove anything to anyone. She could simply observe what was inside her.

Between her fingers was her sadness, her deep desire for companionship, her disappointment over the relationships that had not turned out as she had hoped, her need to love and share her life with another person.

She no longer tried to convince herself that she did not need those things. They were her feelings, and they too had a place within her.

But at the same time, there was something else. The pleasure she felt while creating, the concentration, the calmness, the curiosity to see what might emerge from a piece of clay that only moments earlier had no shape at all.

And that belonged to her just as much.

Little by little, she began to develop a different awareness of who she was. She was not simply the woman without a partner. She was not only the introvert, the sensitive one, or the woman others believed “should” have made different choices.

She was everything she felt, everything she loved, everything she feared, everything she desired, everything she had achieved, and everything she was still searching for.

And perhaps for the first time, she began to understand that acceptance does not mean liking everything we see within ourselves. It means being able to recognize those parts as our own without constantly trying to correct them.

This new way of seeing herself did not change Anthi’s life overnight. There were still moments when she doubted herself, when a comment could hurt her, or when loneliness felt more intense.

The difference was that she was now beginning to recognize what was happening inside her without immediately turning against herself.

When she felt sad because she did not have a partner, she no longer tried to turn that sadness into proof that something was wrong with her. She allowed it to exist. She was a woman who deeply desired companionship, and sometimes that desire could hurt.

But she did not need to be ashamed of it, nor did she need to let it define her worth.

The same began to happen with the other parts of herself. She did not need to become an extrovert to accept that she loved people in her own way. She did not need more friends to prove that she was sociable. She did not need to become less sensitive in order to consider herself strong.

And above all, she did not need a partner to confirm that she was a woman worthy of love.

Anthi had not found all the answers. But she had begun doing something that, until then, had been much more difficult: standing before herself without constantly judging who she was.

And somehow, she began getting to know someone who had been with her throughout her entire life, but whom she might never have truly known:

herself.

She never stopped wanting a partner. There were still evenings when the absence of companionship hurt and moments when she wondered whether she would ever meet the person with whom she wanted to share her life.

But now that desire no longer came to remind her that something was missing from her as a person. It was simply a deep and genuine desire.

She also began to understand that self-acceptance does not arrive when we finally manage to become everything we wish we could be. Nor does it arrive when our insecurities, fears, or the parts of ourselves we find difficult to love disappear.

It begins when we stop treating ourselves like a project that is constantly in need of correction.

Anthi still had things she wanted to change and others she wanted to develop. But now she could look at them without rejecting herself as a whole. She could recognize her weaknesses without forgetting her strengths, want more from life without considering what she already had inadequate, and listen to other people’s opinions without automatically turning them into her own truth.

Perhaps, in the end, this was the most important thing she discovered along the way: for years, she had tried to become someone who would be easier to approve of, praise, and love.

Now, for the first time, she began to wonder what her life might be like if she stopped trying to change herself to fit other people’s expectations.

Because acceptance does not mean giving up on growth.

It means understanding that I do not have to become someone else in order to believe that I am worthy.

And the most important relationship Anthi finally began to build was not the romantic one she had been waiting for all this time.

It was the relationship with herself.