This week has been a tough week for The Husband and I. On Saturday, our bank account got cleaned out by fraudulent activity. While our bank has been really great to work with, not having money for gas and groceries was hard. Luckily, we have great family and friends that helped us out and gave us support.
With being exceptionally broke comes exponentially worse depression and anxiety. At a time when I should be happy (women can vote in Saudi Arabia now! Ms. Marvel won at the HUGOs!), I feel less sure of myself than usual. If you tuned in prior to my Tess Holliday post (ya know, my taking off point in terms of views and interest), you are aware that I am kind of a Debbie Downer. I second guess myself, worry over everything, think I am never enough, and constantly search for a place that feels like "home" should. With the uptick in anxiety and depression, I tend to pull back into myself and over-analyze everything that comes my way.
Today is no different. As I posted a while ago (at least I think I did) that I pitched a few articles to XO Jane. It's been a few weeks and I still haven't heard back. Rationally, I understand they get swamped with submissions and it is possible that they haven't gotten to it yet or that silence is their way of passing (which is pretty normal in the freelance world from what I understand). I got really amped earlier in the week because Marie Claire UK is running a contest for a plus size columnist. You had to submit a sample column and Tess Holliday would be reading/picking the winner. I went back to check it yesterday to confirm I had all the rules and parameters correct and they updated the listing to limit the applications to UK residents only. This is understandable as the retail choices are different there than they are in the US. Understandable, but crushing. I felt like I somehow had a solid chance at this as the parameters for the column were not limited to fashion. It was a 6 column gig that I thought could be a great stepping stone. And it will be for whoever gets it, just not for me.
It is a strange feeling to have a surge of confidence and have it ripped away literally in the time it takes a page on the internet to load. Being someone who is generally the polar opposite of confident, I was riding that wave like I was a pro surfer. XO Jane may have passed over me because my pitches were weak, but this was an actual article submission. My challenge here was brevity, not content. Brevity I could master. I convinced myself I could conquer the world for a day and a half. Flying higher than usual (and I can pinpoint that last time I was that confident: January 17, 2015 at approx. 9PM EST, immediately following a panel at Arisia I was on - and crushed - about slut shaming. Although, I was probably the most confident in my life after that.), I was brainstorming ideas and planning out the column. I was thinking about how this could launch me into something more fulfilling than my current job. For a brief, shining moment everything felt ok and normal and possible. I read the edit in the rules, took the gut punch reading it gave me, and tried to push it from my mind. With terrible emotions running high, that could not be done. I have spent most of today working and looking at other publications for freelancing opportunities. Each one I click, even if it doesn't have crazy hoops to jump through, makes me take a mental step back to a place where I let self doubt wash over me and soak into my soul like some freaky form of osmosis. I have continually beat myself up for daring to hope and daring to feel like I was capable of landing such a great gig.
Self doubt, lack of confidence/self-esteem, anything of that nature is so detrimental to the spirit. It zaps creativity, creates inner turmoil, and makes one feel less than. This made me think about how I got here. How did I arrive at a place barren of something so essential? My parents encouraged me. My family always seemed to support me (even if now I feel a bit like the black sheep). No one stood in the way of me being creative or bookish. I was always a fat kid and was teased but it wasn't that. At least not until later in my teens was that an issue. I was often the teacher's pet or close to it, with a Hermione Granger complex about grades. There were some rivals but we always engaged in light hearted one-ups-manship. Boom. There it is. The rivalries.
I was a know it all, smug, nerd. My biggest rival was a know it all, smug, cool kid. We would argue over spelling and test scores in fifth grade. He was brilliant, and a ginger (kind of. Fun Fact: My ginger love started at 6 - he was 7 and befreckled and beautiful and perfect. It has lasted since then). Popular but not sporty. I thought I was also brilliant and while not popular or sporty or edgy decided this could be love. We got into a heated argument about spelling test scores one day. The test included the word rendezvous. There must have been a mishap where I razzed him for spelling it wrong because upon revealing his score was higher than mine he said that was the word I must have gotten wrong (PS: It wasn't. You didn't believe me then, but it wasn't that) and then proceeded to violently scream out the spelling at me - which is how I still hear it spelled in my head today. This only made me love this kid more. I was weird then, I'm weird now. But he was the one that ended up launching the cascading effect of my loss of confidence and what would be my too cool for school attitude. I was a reader. Anything I could get my paws on I devoured. So confident in my ability to read, I always volunteered to read out loud in class when it was an option. We were reading The House of Dies Drear. To this day, I remember nothing of the book except this event. I got picked to read. I started off just as sure of myself as usual but came across a word I was unsure of. Instead of stopping and asking, I attempted to soldier through. I read it, voice quivering, leaving a half hearted question mark on the end of it like I was searching for approval that I got it right. He snickered. He laughed with his friends, making fun of me in their little corner. Face hot with embarrassment, I continued on until it was someone else's turn and spent the rest of the day mortified. It was not love. Well, not for him. The adults were wrong. Teasing wasn't a sign he liked me. Teasing was just teasing. It was mean and hateful and robbed me of confidence. I stopped offering to read as much. I stopped caring about comparing grades. As I went through the rest of school, I shirked off home work and projects. I stopped reading as much. I lost the desire to commit to academics. This lead to declining grades in high school and dysfunction in college.
What I should have learned that day was that even though I thought I knew everything I needed to know for a 10 year old, I stumbled and had to learn something new. I should have understood that people learn new things all the time and that one slip up can lead to doors opening. All I saw was doors closing. I took away from this that I would never be smart enough for what I wanted.
Messed up, right? But in retrospect, it makes tons of sense. I tied my intellectual appeal to my general appeal - if I am smart and clever and funny they will obviously adore me. Though I understand this wasn't his way of rejecting me (he probably was unaware of said childish love), it wasn't his way of bullying me... He was smug jerk who took advantage of my fall from fifth grade grace to try to cement himself as smarter than me. Unfortunately for me, I internalized it and kicked off 20 years of overanalyzing every thing I do. I became my biggest critic and enemy that day.
From 6th grade on, I let my feelings control how I proceeded through school. I let them shut me down and paralyze me with fear. It is probably why I changed my major so many times: I couldn't commit to one pursuit. To attempt to master something meant potential failure. Failure meant coming face to face with not being good enough. I didn't finish college. I have nothing to show for my time there. Instead, I try to proceed like a ramshackle jack of all trades. I can still be a know it all but being the master of none means I can be content, yes? No. It is another thing I look back on as another stupid mistake. Not having a degree, not pursuing and dedicating my life's work to something makes it hard to find meaning. I makes it impossible for me to feel confident in searching for career fulfillment. Every door I see ajar comes with the requirement of a degree. In fearing failure, I have in fact failed myself (and in my mind those who supported me). Lamenting on that is dangerous if you already feel so broken. Doing so makes me feel trapped, caged in a life I hadn't planned for. Living a life so different than the one I assumed I would be living at this point.
Even when we are joking around, teasing, whatever, our words have a greater impact on those that hear them than we know. He probably doesn't remember that that exchange happened (secretly I hope he remembers the rendezvous part because that is HILARIOUS). The fact that I can pinpoint it in my mind after 20 years as where I started to fall apart is the problem. I became really jaded in middle school. I was never the best me possible, never the nicest or most understanding. It worries me that I had that kind of effect on someone inadvertently. We are so quick to defend things we say as meaning nothing but when we all bring our own unique experiences to the table, how can we be so dismissive? #deepthoughts
TL;DR - Small things matter. Confidence is easy to lose but hard to gain.
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