Something shocked me last week and I have probably spent 90% of the time between now and then thinking about how I feel about it and pondering how the bleeding heck I was going to put it into words. This below is the statement that shocked me;
‘ You, you’re the one writing that blog but you’re so confident! You don’t care how you look or what people think. Are you making it up to be famous?’
Shall I tell you why it shocked me? It wasn’t because someone thought I was writing my innermost thoughts and feelings on an online blog, effectively laying naked in cyberspace and shouting ‘hey come judge me and my contradictions-of-the-mind’, just to grab five seconds of fame.
It was the fact that another person was questioning my right to feel something negative about myself. I am, for the record, a woman who is comfortable and happy with me and what I mean by that is I have strong morals that I believe in, I am kick ass at my chosen career and if I had a choice I would be friends with me. I am, however, not happy with the aesthetics of me.
I know I am not the only woman who feels like this. There is millions of us out there who are smashing the world up everyday and doing amazing things. It doesn’t mean we aren’t allowed to want to change something about ourselves does it? or are we not allowed to be confident on the outside and wear a cloak of invisibility around our insecurities?
Confidence and self esteem, in my opinion, are two completely separate things. Self esteem, as it suggests, is yours and yours alone. Sometimes you share it, and sometimes you keep it to yourself. Sometimes it’s as overflowing and full as a head of newly bonded hair extensions, and sometimes it is as low as the end of your favourite perfume, one squirt left and three weeks till payday.
I can see why the person made the comment, to the outside world I appear carefree, happy and full of confidence. However, I’ve never really felt such low self esteem as in the past few years. I’ve also never really known that I can take two hours to get ready, cry, tantrum and self loathe then spend the next eight hours helping fix other people’s self esteem.
Maybe she is feeling about me those pangs of panic and disbelief I felt that day about my hairdresser. Maybe she doesn’t realise about the cloak and assumes I am as secure on the inside as I try to show on the outside? I’m not sure and it would be wrong of me to make assumptions.
But here’s what I do know. My answer to that statement is
I just wish i was making it up X
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