When I was a little kid I had a shit ton of confidence. I was the little five year old that would run up to some random kid and be like “HEY! Let’s play dinosaurs, I’ll be the pterodactyl (insert pterodactyl noise here)” and then would continue to chase them around until we were best friends. I looked at everybody, waved at everybody and talked to everybody. I never thought “Oh gosh what is this person thinking about me” and I never thought “Oh shit I really need to stop wearing overalls”. I just did my thing and loved myself like my parents taught me to and loved life. When you’re little you have no worries, or at least I didn’t.
Then I got older, as we all do. With middle school came a lot more pressure than elementary school, but I kept my confidence. I remained friends with all my friends from middle school, made new friends from across town and my grades remained A’s and B’s. I did basketball, soccer, softball, band, newspaper, student council, you name it. I was confident in what I did. I wrote creative stories in language arts and always shared them with the class because I didn’t care if anyone didn’t like them. Because I did. I was simple. And weird. I wore boy’s Gap clothing until I was 12. I stupidly refused to wear a bra or mess around with make up. I beat up a boy after school for not sharing his football. None of that made me feel bad about myself. It actually made me feel good.
Until I started dating.
You know how dementors eat the souls of the living in the Harry Potter series? It was kind of like that. With every guy I crushed on a little bit more of my pure confidence was sucked out of me until I couldn’t breathe anymore. To this day I forget to breathe if a boy I like comes anywhere near my face, but things are better.
There were a few dark years for me during the end of middle school. Years where I dramatically and immaturely believed that unhitching my skin from my body with a pair of scissors would make me feel better. More important. More loved. I forgot what confidence was when I started dating boys because they started disrespecting me. I felt unworthy. I felt shy. I worried about everything and everyone except myself.
I remember the first time my mother found out that I was cutting myself. I was in eighth grade. I’ve never seen so much hurt and pain and anguish on anyone’s face ever. It was like every scar on my wrists was a fresh wound on her’s. She cried that night. I cried that night. But the tears didn’t cure my disease.
Looking back I know I was stupid for trying to hurt myself. I don’t think I ever wanted to die, exactly but I also don’t think I had the confidence in myself to do it either. It just felt good. I know that seems crazy. Maybe if you’ve gone through it though you know what I am talking about. I liked the feeling basically because I hated the feeling of every day. Of guys hurting me. Of feeling helpless. Of my confidence diminishing to nothing.
High school brought a lot of changes for me. My confidence levels began to grow as I made the varsity soccer team as a freshman and was asked to be on the JV basketball team instead of the freshman team. I made new friends from the town over that really seemed to like me for who I was. I wasn’t dating anyone or messing around with anyone that wasn’t good for me. It was a pretty good year. A year of confidence I needed. I didn’t try and hurt myself. I didn’t feel like I was being attacked by hooded figures sucking about my soul through a bendy straw. I felt like I was finding me.
I started dating a way older boy my sophomore year. He had graduated the year before. Nothing against him, he really wasn’t a still isn’t a bad guy. We’ve had our share of ups and downs. But now I am realizing it was honestly the worst thing I could have done to my recovering confidence. I found that I was only happy when I was making him happy. That I could only think that time was well spent when I spent it with him. I got caught up in love songs and love stories and love letters and came to the conclusion that being loved was the only thing on this earth that mattered. And not loved by parents or friends, but by a guy. I felt so naively confident with him, but felt like shit when he was gone. There was a false sense of stability in my world as long as he was there.
And then, after two and a half years, he cheated on me.
I was a senior in high school. We were planning a life together (looking back it makes me want to punch myself in the face). I was crushed. Not just because of the betrayal, but because of the feeling of emptiness I had inside. I thought I wasn’t good enough. My one source of confidence was gone.
I have based my life off of that statement ever since. Every time something bad happened to me or I didn’t make the team or the grade or the friend I would justify it with “I’m not good enough, of course I didn’t get what I want“. And I was content with that. I had never given confidence a thought. Well, for my friends, yes. I was constantly giving them advice to believe in themselves but I couldn’t apply the advice to myself because I was just so sure that I was never good enough for anything I wanted and never would be.
I sold myself short in future relationships both friendly and romantic because I wasn’t good enough. I got average grades my first year of college because I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t get the things I wanted most in life because I simply wasn’t good enough.
I got together again with this boy after his engagement broke off. And it turned out to be the best thing I ever did because I realized something.
I was good enough.
Not for him. I actually left him. I was good enough for me.
For the first time since I was in elementary school, I broke down the barrier of self-doubt and self-hate and dependence on men for a sense of worth. It was like I unleashed a patronus of bad-assery against the forces that were sucking out my confidence. And I was surprised with the results.
I don’t know what it was exactly, besides possibly the fact of actually beginning to believe in myself and see all my hard work pay off. I had made it into a prestigious honor society, gotten a 4.0, landed an internship, aced an internship interview and received an offer the next day…. I just started focusing on the positives, really.
I feel like that little 5 year old girl in the overalls running around hissing at people pretending to be a flying dinosaur. I feel like that 11 year old girl running around in basketball shorts and no bra beating up the boys. I feel like me again, for the first time in forever (No Frozen pun intended).
There is a Fall Out Boy song that goes:
“You are what you love, no who loves you”
I try and listen to that song every day, because it teaches something that everyone should know and live their life by. I have found so much happiness in the things I love and gotten rid of so much sadness by not giving a shit about who loves me. I feel like I can do anything now. I take each day one step at a time and look at my future with a smile, not a question of “who’s going to be loving me then?”
I am a Harry Potter lover, writer, reader, flute player, Dovakhin, worker, coffee lover, xbox player, intern, eater, sleeper, party-er, friend, family member and hobbit and no one can make me feel bad about any of that, because it’s what I love.
If you go out and find what you love and stop worrying about who loves you, you will be able to do anything. Confidence is one of the greatness gifts God has blessed humans with and if you have it you should never give it up.