Self Worth

reflecting

I live in a city, thriving in an industry and currently at the age where I continuously question my self-worth. I keep chanting that moving to London hasn’t been easy, without backing up the reason as to why. Well, here’s a bit of transparency. Moving here, I knew only a handful of people and really I didn’t know them. They were distant connections via some family friends and though they were completely new to me, the American (slightly naive) trait is to open your heart and let them become part of your world-especially in times of vulnerability. Keeping faith in that proper American hospitality.

And just like that, they backlashed. Leaving me stranded physically and emotionally. Taking advantage of my generosity, integrity and limited financial assets. From that point, I decided to try to surround myself with other like-minded people all whilst trying to pick myself up from being kicked around for the first several weeks of my time in London. Though successful, I still found/find it difficult to push through the barriers—the biggest exclusion of all trying to tap into my own cultural community of people. It’s because of that I stick to fellow Americans living in London or other expats who float in the same pool as me.

Another chapter in the self-worth saga relates to my everyday world functioning as a “young entrepreneur” or “minority woman” or “person working in fashion.” Never in my entire life did I find these aspects so, so restricting. And to be fair, these barriers have made me stronger—yet it doesn’t make it easy to excel when barriers come in the way on the daily.

Finally, my parents and I have been talking a lot about settling down recently. I feel a lot more comfortable with my career, comfortable with where I live to a certain degree, and comfortable with the fact that I will possibly forever be in a country away from my own that I call home. With these come a lot of questions, feeling of rejection, nebulous reflections and impressions on my body, and of course that feeling of ‘if I’m even worth the time for anyone.’ My social relationships in the UK have not been the deepest or felt the most authentic and it makes me worried if it’s me or just those general emotions that come with thinking about big changes.

there comes a point…

So to those of you who think that I “have it all” or feel that my “life is so put together”-I, Supal Desai, struggle on the daily too. I struggle with people being possessive of my time, struggle with missing my family everyday and tangibly seeing/feeling that unconditional love, struggle with people not accepting me, struggle with having to be someone different just to fit in. We all fight a battle, or a war for that matter, and knowing that my problems are just an an ounce of what the greater world has to deal with is reassuring that I will get through it.

And from this, I finally note that though my feelings of being separated from own body is my battle-I still take the time to sit down every single day to reflect on my self-worth. I am an entrepreneur. A woman who has achieved (and is still achieving) great things like graduating from a prestigious university with one of the highest marks from the University of St. Andrews, someone who started a business on a whim and makes enough to eat and take her family on trips they truly deserve, my brother (whom I look up to) comes to me for advice, my mom asks me for a recipe, I have friends who immediately think of me when they see anything about London on the news… and most of all, I am really bloody proud of that I was able to move to a new country, on my own and proving that the world’s obstacles are possible to defeat.