Collecting Medals Subconsciously

You were taught, somewhere along the way, that needing people was a liability. maybe no one said it out loud. maybe life just kept rewarding you every time you didn’t need anyone, every time you endured alone what others fell apart over, every time you moved on from something that should have broken you and didn’t. the lesson compounded, without you knowing: detachment works. self sufficiency works. you are the proof.

so you built a wall. not out of arrogance, you know the difference, and this isn’t that. it’s more like a scoreboard only you can see, packed with medals signed in your own handwriting. I did this alone. I survived that alone. I got here, and no one carried me. you don’t show this wall to people. you don’t need them to see it. that’s almost the point.

this is where it gets subtle, and if you feel resistance inside reading the next sentence, pay attention to that resistance, it’s information. deep in the operating system of the high performing, intellectually independent person is a feedback loop, a deeper belief, it is a byproduct of being yourself. the strength you have, created it. it says something like: I was destined to accomplish things by myself. you start to have a positive feedback when you get things done by yourself, other have it in the form of: the more I accomplish alone, the more I am worth. it’s not conscious. it’s not something you’d admit to if asked directly. but watch your behavior and you’ll find it: it is deep, it is attributing factor, the act not asking for help is not just not know how to ask for help. no, there is another reason for it, it is that now relaying on people feels like betrayal to your own self. for others might be something different. the hunger for the next achievement isn’t really about external recognition, external validation is not your thing. it’s about internal proof. you are collecting evidence for a case you’re always building against yourself, a case that says you are only as valuable as what you have conquered, and only if you conquered it alone.

the tragedy, and it is a tragedy, is that this isn’t strength . it’s a self worth and a deeper belief structure built on sand. and no matter how many medals you add to the wall, the wall never feels full. the next achievement arrives and the relief lasts maybe a day, maybe an hour, before you start to feel empty again. you are running a race, but with a finish line that keeps moving, and the cruelest part is that you set the finish line yourself.

but there’s a grief and even a more deeper belief underneath, you look at the wall sometimes, at all of it, genuinely impressive, genuinely hard won, and you feel something closer to sadness than pride. because you know. you know you wished someone had been there. you know there are victories no one witnessed, rooms you walked into alone, moments of arrival that had no one to arrive to. and somewhere, unreachable now, is a younger version of you who would have wanted to know it turns out okay. you won for him. and he’ll never find out.