I Hate it! – The Fear of Being Left Behind

Hey Readers,

I know! I meant to upload new and fresh content for you guys, and honestly, I felt unmotivated to post due to many reasons, especially things that have happened in my personal life that I don’t want to discuss.

I also meant to re-design my website, but, like what I’ve mentioned above, I was unmotivated and quite depressed about life, being at a stage where I felt hopeless because of many things like finishing university, graduating, being unemployed, not being in a relationship, not earning a salary, losing, making and viewing friendships as useless; the post-uni blues I may call it, the post-teenage/social life where I don’t see my friends that often.

Anyway, in this blog post, I want to discuss and share one of my biggest fears, which is, of course, being left behind (feeling last and least place) and why I feel a certain way about it.

What do I mean by being or feeling left behind?

Well…

There are many ways you can interpret what I mean by feeling or being left behind, but what I can understand is that…

How do I explain it?

I feel as if i’m not running at the same pace as the others, feeling like I can’t keep up with them, and I can’t get over that, unfortunately, and there could be a reason for that.

I can remember, specifically in primary school, year 1 (kindergarten), I used to cry at the lunch table during lunch time cause I was always the last person to finish my food. The dinner ladies didn’t allow me to leave and told me to eat more of my lunch, which I didn’t like. Everyone else finished their food and left, except me; I wanted to catch up. Another story was that I used to be in a trio friendship group, where I used to get left out cause the other two were best friends to the point they used to keep secrets from me. Moreover, when they got into an argument, I became the middle man, the messenger, telling her what the other friend told me and the list goes on.

When I was sleeping, my older sister heard me saying, “Guys, don’t leave me, I got the balloons, don’t leave me”.

I was talking in my sleep, apparently.

I can go on about my past traumatic friendships forever, but I can’t cause this will become a never-ending blog post.

For me to understand my primary fear, I need to define it.

What is the meaning of being left behind?

Being left behind can be described as someone being ahead of you or metaphorically, you’re doing a morning run with your friends, and while you’re running, you start to lose your breath, your pace starts to become slower, your friends doesn’t notice and continue to run, you stop running for a bit to catch your breath, as you’re gaining your breath, you try to call their name but, they ignore you cause 1, they can’t hear you because of the far distance and 2, they didn’t notice. You start to feel down, feeling like a failure and insecure that you can’t catch up with your friends.

That’s how I view the meaning of being left behind.

When feeling left behind, particularly in life, it can easily mess up our self-esteem and warp our perception of life and expectations. In life, we meant to achieve something at a certain age, such as starting university (college) at 18, starting our full-time job at 22, getting into our first relationship at 16 or whatever, losing our virginity in our late teens/early twenties and, if you don’t achieve them at a certain or the ‘right’ age, it can mess someone detrimentally, causing someone to question themselves, creating low self-esteem and insecurities, forming jealousy that isn’t intentional, creating pain and hurt around those you’re supposed to be happy for.

For example, looking through your social media feed and your page can create high expectations that are difficult or impossible to reach and create FOMO (the fear of being left out/behind).

Social media – Does it worsen my fear of being left behind?

For me, social media does worsen my fear of being left behind because of FOMO.

Seeing your friends or people in or close to my age group achieving something while thinking, am I meant to be at that stage of life?

I understand that people have a different pace when achieving, but it can be difficult to get over, especially when the majority are on or past that stage.

What I didn’t know about myself

What I learned about myself is that I tend to be competitive, and it’s because I have an older sister who is two years older and a twin, basically siblings that are close in age.

I used to have a mindset that If they achieved something, such as getting good grades or having at least a circle of friends, I needed to be successful and if not, I was a failure and incapable.