I’m not competitive or rather I didn’t think I was. OK, I’m not conventionally competitive. I used to confuse worth with superiority: I thought to be valuable to someone, I had to be The Best someone. Ludicrous? Yes. True? Painfully. Let me explain:

I’m not irrational (most of the time): I won’t fight anyone for their glory or delude myself into unwinnable fights ie. Some people are just blessed and we’re not blessed equally tbh. When confronted with a shortcoming I’ll often say: “I have other gifts”. But this isn’t the story of how rational I am. This is the story of how I was nearly (accidentally) crushed by competition.

An ugly thing I learned in high school was faux modesty, this was preceeded by the groundbreaking revelation that I made in grade 4: that I was “smart”. I’d honestly had no idea before then that I was doing anything out of the ordinary so imagine my shock when I realised people filled in 100% of their tests but didn’t actually expect to get 100% of the answers correct (why bother you know? Lol). We didn’t have “top” lists until high school so I was content inherently knowing I was going to prize giving every year (again, this seemed pretty standard until it occurred to me that this wasn’t everyone’s norm) and didn’t give any thought to who was “top” of anything unless my name was on the certificate. And when the lists came raining down (in high school) it bothered me that people cared what i was doing. I understand now that we’re all built differently and are motivated by different things but the idea that someone out there was making any changes whatsoever to what they were doing to ‘unseat’ little old me from a largely fictional position was unsettling. It still blows my mind if we’re being honest but it’ll be a while before my accomplishments can be quantified like that again so it’s no biggie. Competition didn’t make sense to me. In my arena, But it was a vicious (unconscious) impulse undercutting everything else of value in my life.

I’m adventurous; I’ll try almost anything. I’m even OK with failure in the event that it’s not my arena. Like you, I’d built a personality around what I was good at and everything else was fun. Low stakes. I knew I couldn’t sing so I was free to improve and try from a comfortably low place free to admire songbirds in peace. The same goes for athletics and sports in general (I always tried out knowing I’d come 4th at best) or, I don’t know, boys (before my delayed interest in them kicked in but more on that later). Know thyself. Excellent. Unless I had to be good at it. Academics were something I could take for granted and even if I didn’t have that luxury, there were no stakes for me: absolutely nothing would happen to me if someone else was “top”. My identity would take a knock but I wouldn’t like, die. That’s my left brain: say hi left brain.

Then things like your heart get involved and then it’s a jungle out here. Vulnerability is beautiful madness: capable of crushing you and healing simultaneously. It’s a lifeline but you have to pull yourself up, rope burn, sore muscles and all. And it hurts like a motherfucker.

Left brain has left the group chat.

Uh oh…

The crushes
So this was my unpleasant impulse: if I cared, everyone was competition.
I distinctly remember when I started liking the opposite sex I surveyed the terrain and took calculated risks. I enjoyed the butterflies, so I allowed them. I liked the excitement and how a crush could literally change the colour palette of your life so I allowed that too. The rest was excruciating. In order for you to like me (I thought) you had to like me more than every other girl. In the world. Read: I, Ntoetse Caritus Palesa Lerotholi, had to be better than Every. Girl. In. The. World. This, coupled with the crushing realisation that there will literally always be someone better than you at anything, was brutal. I never tore anyone (but myself) down in the the process but instead used myself as kindling to gas everyone else up. I was constantly running my own stats: “yes I have a great smile but ‘x’ has a better one. Sure I have a nice personality but ‘y’ is a delight. I’m quite lovely but ‘z’ has the best body ever seen.” And on and on went my internal monologue. So I created a less painful crush prototype; one free from investment that I could indulge from a safe distance. Only butterflies and none of that other crap because trying to be The Best Girl was a fools errand. People thought I was aloof, above the fray: I was removed.

I learned this about myself when I accidentally liked a boy a bit more than I intended and found myself in a full blown real life crush. Guys, liking someone can make you a crazy person. I was stressed and on Facebook and my rock bottom was when I turned to my friend, after having seen his (beautiful) ex (extremely ex) girlfriend there and used my mouth to say these words: “I’m sexually intimidated by her”. Girl wasn’t even in the picture anymore and based on her presence in his past (and our comparative stats), I took myself out of the game and shut that crush shit down. I’d done this before, repeatedly and on a smaller scale but it was the first time I saw it. Madness.

It happened again, only this time, it was closer to home, in my arena. I got to university and felt like my mom had been paying everyone in my life to tell me I was smart and now the funds had run out. I didn’t understand how the game was played and given that I’d based my identity around it (I wasn’t going to win any Olympic gold medals but a Nobel prize was not implausible) calling it crushing doesn’t quite cut it. I was lost for a long time and had to interrogate why I’d equated worth with being the best. I started to wonder if it was worth being a doctor if I wasn’t The Best. And then vulnerability saved me. I said it out loud once and suddenly I wasn’t alone. We were all feeling it (well, those of us who weren’t at the “top” anymore anyway). I got to explore and develop what I wanted to be and what else I brought to the table if couldn’t be the Best academically anymore. I found new bests and new ways to deal with not being it. The test run was driving, it was the first test I wasn’t sure I could pass beacsue I was forced to confront something I had to be good at that I wasn’t inherently good at that I literally had to be good at. There’s no short cut to learning a new skill, which usually doesn’t bother me much but there were stakes! I could actually fail fail (I didn’t but I could’ve though, with relative ease) and that was terryfing. I thank driving for that variable and preemptive lesson. Humility came before the fall and I’m forever grateful or it would have been… Crushing.

The last one was this: writing. This blog has been years in the making and absolutely nothing stood in my way except my unpleasant impulse. Words come easily to me, language is one of the great loves of my life and books are a failsafe. Words have been my superpower and guardian always. I wrote (read: winged) an essay without much preparation on a bus trip home one Friday evening that opened the doors to a scholarship that changed my life and funded my university studies. Clever phrases come to me, I thought I just had a knack for it or that it was luck but if it happens consistently it no longer qualifies as coincidence. What I’m saying is, I know I can write. Well (OK, writing that is making me sweat but I’ll persevere to make my point). And yet, when I started to care about it, I stopped. The more literature I consumed the less adequate I felt. I thought: who the hell am I to call myself a writer when Chinua Achebe and poetry that makes my heart explode exists. How I dare I place myself in the ranks of JK Rowling, Max Erhmann and Rumi? Suddenly, everyone I’d ever admired, every author who’d held the title was my personal competition and I somehow had to earn the title first before writing another word and putting it out into the world. Imagine: thinking perfect came before practice?! Remeber when left brain left the group chat? This is the kind of logical nonsense we need to call her back to prevent.

Left brain has joined the group chat

“now this is the secret that nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and sky of the sky of a tree called life ” *

You don’t have to be the best to be someone’s favourite. We are not obligated to qualify for love in order to bask in its joy. We’ve coined the term “guilty pleasure” like pleasure should be apologised for because it looks different to someone else’s and it is a half life. You can be someone’s best without being The best and this truth has been the key unlearning unpleasant impulses.

The Script are my favourite band (I didn’t say every album) despite my ability to recognise that, say, The Black Keys are better in almost every way. My top 5 movies have won no Oscars (that’s a lie, I just remembered Heath Ledger won an entire posthumous Academy Award), but you cannot convince my heart to care about awards and critical acclaim. At least half of internet fights are spent trying to equate liking something with its superiority. We spend a lot of time defending the things (and people) that we love to people who don’t love them as much. Half of my relationships have gotten only half of me. I spent the time puzzling; holding the other half of myself back asking myself “but why does he like *me*” (I mean I’m fantastic make no mistake, but the more specific question I was asking was: why did he CHOOSE me out of EVERYBODY) and that’s sad, and diminishing and exhausting. Something (and someone)’s entire qualification can be:” because I like it”. I’m finding a way for vulnerabity and my left brain to co-exist and its beautiful madness. Neither are the best but both are favs and I Stan(d by this):

“and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)” *

*ee cummings