Growing Confidence

From being an awkwardly-shy, quiet young girl, always on the outside of friendship groups, I often wonder about how I grew up to become one of the happiest grown-ups I know. When did it happen? When did I finally get that little bud of confidence that blossomed into an acceptance of who I am now?

I always hated who I was when I was growing up. I so desperately wanted to be loud and outgoing and popular. Within any group of friends I always felt like the least valued member of the group. I felt I wasn’t funny and I wasn’t interesting and I was just boring. The discomfort I felt when I was playing out with my friends was absolutely all-consuming. The fear that people talked about me behind my back and the ‘knowledge’ that they would rather I wasn’t there was immense. It ate me up and it was devastating.

A fairly clever girl, I never put my hand up in class, I never volunteered for school plays or presentations. Acting was a small release and when I was selected to take part in productions, I really did let loose and throw my all into it, but it was very rare that I auditioned for such parts.

An audience of several hundred people didn’t phase me in the slightest, yet a small room of listeners was unbearable - worse still, addressing a group of friends. The dread I felt walking into a shop and speaking to the person on the other side of the counter and knowing there was a good chance that I had turned a deep shade of red was enough to stop me going in sometimes. Being asked to read in class sent me into a frenzy of shaking and sweating and trying desperately to hide my purple face.

I look back on my school days and I feel so much sympathy for that little girl; the little girl who meant no harm to anyone. Children and youths can be so inconsiderate and damaging to somebody who suffers from having low self-esteem.

When I decided to head off to university, I don’t remember making a big deal about moving away, but there I was, putting myself in a situation right outside of my comfort zone, going to a place that I had never been to before, 250 miles away from home, with nobody that I knew and studying a subject that I had no experience of. How I did that, I just don’t know, but I have no doubt that that was a great part of my therapy.

Before going to university, I studied an art diploma for 9 months. Again, I knew nobody but in those 9 months, I met some fantastic people and had an amazing time. For the first time in my life, I felt that some of my friends there had actually chosen me as a friend and wanted to be my friend. I never felt popular in any way and I still felt like bottom of the pack, but I felt like a valued bottom-of-the-pack person.

At university, I actually enjoyed the fact that I didn’t know anybody. I remember deciding to just be myself and not try to be something I wasn’t. I remember that life-changing thought. I suddenly started to learn about who I was. I came across some good friendship groups - never getting hugely close to anybody but having a lot of friends. And within 3 months, I had met the man that I was going to marry.

Alex was lovely and he seemed to really like me for who I was. Some of his friends were into different things to me and weren’t very accepting of me, but, despite feeling like I was having a very hard time with them at the time, I now see that they also helped shape my confidence. Rather than conforming and trying to please everybody, I stood my ground, continued to be me, and gained an identity. I was proud to be different and I was proud to be me.

More and more, I started to hear compliments from friends about how I was a nice person, and how I was a very genuine person, and for the first time ever I actually heard them and believed them. I met people who didn't mind that I was quiet or shy.

I remember going out with a new friend from work and meeting all of her friends for the first time. Any time before this and I would have sat there very happily listening to all of their funny stories, nodding and laughing but not feeling interesting enough to contribute any conversation. That night however, I remember catching a glimpse of myself, holding the table, having everybody laughing and everybody really enjoying my conversations. Reports the next day came back that they all wanted me to go out with them next time too. Those people had been so content with themselves that they hadn't needed to judge and had no predisposed ideas of who I was.

Alex and I bought our first house after university - we were self-contained, independent, enjoying life and knew, near enough, which direction we were heading in.

Don’t get me wrong, I never gained a complete confidence in myself. I still have many hang-ups; I still analyse situations and wish the world could swallow me up, or at least erase the last thing I said or did; I still dread situations that I know are going to make me feel uncomfortable or invaluable.

We moved up north and I rekindled a strong friendship I had with a friend from my diploma and I also met some other brilliant new friends. They all individually, encouraged my confidence and brought out the best in me and were always reassuring me through their actions that they enjoyed my company and that I was a valued friend.

Becoming a mum was beyond doubt, the greatest life-changing moment and the single thing that suddenly gave me an overwhelming feeling of happiness. I suddenly learnt for sure who I was and what I had spent the rest of my life waiting to become. It was a defining moment and one in which the rest of my life suddenly seemed to make sense. I was good at being a mum, it suited me and it was who I was. In fact, it was the first thing in my life that I felt really really good at!

My kids adore me - they think I am the best thing ever. They see no problems with my confidence. I tell them funny stories, they tell me funny stories. We are best friends. They don't mind if I'm quiet or loud. As long as I can be with them and hold their tiny hands and tuck them in at bedtime, they don't judge me in the slightest.

A lot of people talk about how becoming a mother and wife makes them feel they lose their own identity. I gained my identity, or rather, I realised it.

I’m also a rather good judge of character and one of my best assets is the ability to appreciate the good qualities in others and to learn from them and their experiences. Many people feel it a weakness to accept advice or to go along with the suggestions of others. I found that by taking little bits from all the good in everybody else, and following advice made me into a slightly better person. And I am extremely lucky to have a lot of people in my life to take inspiration from!

Being comfortable and happy within myself and my life gives me the ability to look at myself more subjectively and when I look at myself, I see a woman who loves and who cares for others, who means absolutely no harm to anyone, who has no time for ill thoughts about anybody else and who just wants to live harmoniously within my lovely little family and to not be judged for who I am and how much or how little I say. What does it matter to anyone else anyway?

I do wish I had have realised all of this much much earlier. I still regret my childhood and teens which could have been so much happier. I still regret being the awkward, quiet 20 year old who bored everybody with her silence. I just wish that I had have been able to see then the good I had in me and that I was worth more than everybody else’s disapproval. I will always slightly dread seeing all of the people who made me feel like this and who still remember me for being shy and quiet and boring, that will never leave me.

I look at my kids, bubbly and loud and energetic and I pray for them that they will hold all of their mother’s values. But I pray that they will have their father’s natural confidence too so that they don’t miss out on everything in childhood and their precious teenage years that I did.