where does confidence come from?

and can I buy it online?

I’ve been thinking lately about the ginormous pit I’ve had in my stomach for about six months and when the perfect time would be to do something about it. Is it today? Is it tomorrow? Perhaps it’s 11 pm on a random Tuesday evening as I triage myself through a series of desperate Google searches to reveal the true cause of said pit like I usually do?

For a long time, I believed everyone had a pit… and we were all just fine with carrying on. Maybe people talk about their pits, and maybe they don’t. Regardless, I was still very convinced that having a gnawing, hollow pain at my core was a natural part of life, we’re all just bumbling through, figuring it out and making mistakes because no one really knows what they’re doing, right?

If I could gently reduce the use of any phrase that comes with pleading eyes and hands stretched across coffee shop tables, it would be that “No one knows what they’re really doing”. How can that possibly be true? It’s a fable or a string of words someone slips into the conversation as easily as talking about the weather.

I’ll let you in on a secret that is seldom shared, people do know what they’re doing, and they’re also exceptionally good at it, maybe through sheer luck, determination or hard work, or all three, but they know. It’s effortless for them, like breathing or… ice skating. In comparison, I wake up every morning and spend 30 minutes fumbling around in the dark trying to find my glasses and I don’t even wear glasses.

Life takes guts and currently for whatever reason, I haven’t got any. Maybe I puked them all up on New Year’s Eve when I was poorly and eating green grapes under my kitchen table watching the wrong New Year’s Eve stream. I keep trying to scrape them off the floor like I’m pulling sand over myself at the beach and it’s not working. If someone walks into me, I apologise. I second guess myself, I nod yes when inside I’m shouting no, I’m terrified of making mistakes (still). If there’s a fork in the road I take the wrong path even after thinking about it for three days.

I don’t know where my self confidence went, but one day it was just kind of… sort of… gone. It exists within me in certain pockets, and I can talk to strangers for hours about hats or ask questions about the types of beans they’re using at a coffee shop but when I turn out different pockets in the great metaphorical trousers of life there’s nothing there at all, just threads and a few coins. I have self-confidence in things that aren’t useful like believing I could design a really aseshetic house on The Sims. This, I’ve learned the hard way, is not a desirable trait. As a graduate of the Brené Brown school of vulnerability, I always thought there would be more power in my flaws, that I’d find some validation in bearing all the parts of who I am in a radical form of self-acceptance. This, I’ve learned the hard way, is not a desirable trait either.

I get into social situations and panic that I have nothing revolutionary to contribute, nothing profound or obscure to say and when I do open my mouth it’s not the right answer anyway. I have dreams but they’re not elaborate enough - it would be so convenient if I loved that new weird thing other people are pourinng over, maybe then I’d feel like I fit in again. Somewhere along the way liking what the masses liked became a negative synonym for generic in spaces where I thought I mattered. My interests are funny because I make them funny first, laughing at myself before anyone can squeeze some poorly timed joke in that I have to smile at. I stammer when I talk, I choke on my words and have fantasies where I start screaming in the middle of dinner as people stare at me wide eyed. I whisper my hopes and wishes so low that they float off in the breeze like ash. I set fire to myself before anyone else can.

I’m at the point in the movie where I want to get up and walk away mid-conversation as a narrator chimes in to let the audience know that the protagonist has gone missing. In the pararell universe I escape to, I’m running and I’d keep going until my legs burn and my knees hurt and I find myself in a different place entirely. Instead, there’s superglue on my chair and I can’t leave, forced to endure the life I’ve created for myself in all it’s brutal glory.

It’s not lost on me that this is whiney and self-indulgent and cliche when I have so much to be grateful for - at the same time I want to bang my head against a wall. I probably should’ve written all these thoughts down in a journal and gone on with my life, but multiple things can be true at once and maybe you’ll find some validation in reading this. I also realise how important it is to showcase the discomfort that comes with getting older and feeling clueless when the whole world wants to spin everything into a positive all the time. Also, I blame Linkedin somehow.

This shit is toughHHHHHH. It’s not a bed of roses. And what’s more annoying, is that older generations are right, one day you wake up and it HAS all slipped beautifully and tragically by in a concoction of mistakes and grief and triumphs and heartbreaks.

I haven’t figured out the answer yet, to the question in the title of this newsletter, but when I do I’ll be back.

And to quote the famous words of Brené Brown, that’s all I have.

Until the next one,

Lory x

P.S this is also sort of a sister piece to my doing it scared post if you wish to read, sadly I think I’ve gone backwards from where I was then BUT PROGRESS ISN’T LINEAR