As disconcerting as it might be to admit it, I’ve always been a girl who sees overcompensating beauty in others and never grants the same grace in seeing it in herself. I’d admire everyone else’s light and leave mine untouched, unnoticed, overjudged. But I grew up with a dad who always prayed, “May she be better than her equals.” And somehow, that prayer planted something in me that drove my idea of myself throughout my preteens and teens. This idea that I am more, I am better, and I have to justify that I am. And I believed it. I told myself, “I’m most morally right, I have some deeper intelligence, I’m special, I’m different, I don’t get how people don’t get it”. 

But the sad truth is that it never really reflected. Yeah, I have had my moments. I stood out sometimes. But not in the way that felt like I was like top-notch different. At least not top of the class different. Not in the way I believe that prayer meant.

Now I’m 20, and honestly, that idea of myself created this meter in my head, this silly meter of “Yoma’s perfection”, and it feels like on that meter, everyone my age is doing better than me. I see them thriving. I see educational wins, travel, connections, experiences I’ve slowly stopped imagining for myself.

I may or may not regret disclosing this, but there’s this girl. She’s at the very top of that meter. She’s everything I want to be. Everything I used to think I was on the path to becoming. I admire her, not out of jealousy – well, not anymore – but out of a quiet ache of knowing I could not keep up. I tried. I really did. But chasing that version of herself – the self I want for myself – broke something in me. It made me angry. It made me bitter. It made me someone I would resent. Because somewhere deep down, I had always believed I was supposed to be the one in front, the one to be looked up to, the “most special” in the room. And the idea that I wasn’t tore me apart.

Accepting that I’m not extraordinary, that I’m not great, has brought me peace. I’m not top of the meter. I’m not perfect. And maybe that’s not the tragedy I made it out to be. I might be late to this understanding, but I get it now. I really do. There will always be another her. Someone doing a little better. A little brighter. A little more.  But that’s only because the meter homing “better” is being allowed exist. 

That idea of better was mine. I made it. I developed it. And now I see that how it affects me depends entirely on the version of myself I choose to believe in each day.

I’m okay where I am. And okay feels like real peace. I’m easy now because I know I don’t know everything. I’m not all-knowing. I’m not ultrahuman. I’m not here to be better than anyone. I don’t have to be “better than my equals”. Because I’ve let go of the idea that there even has to be a better.

So, losing the battle to be better, has forced me to accept okay, and okay is my perfect for right now.

I’m just here, learning every day, discovering myself slowly, hoping for peace, and not perfection, not anymore. Accepting average, accepting okay, creates room for me to understand something new, learn a little more, be a little greater than who I was before.

There will always be something new to understand, something worth noticing, something beautiful to enjoy, something new learn, to do, to pursue. I don’t have all the cards. I never will. But there’s something serene about being okay with that. Something that feels like me.

And that serenity is worth more to me than the pride and pressure I used to carry.

‘Okay’ has saved me from myself, from the anxiety of the perfection I had created.

So, yay to okay.