Confident and Unconfident

Hi to anyone sitting at home reading this piece of garbage. I wish you all the colors in the world or no colors at all if you prefer that. 

I have a confession to make. I googled to see if the word 'unconfident' existed. I almost opted to use the word 'not confident'. This saves me from having to write the two extra characters, a letter and a space. I almost feel guilty right now for using the googled word since it was not the word that my brain came up with but was borrowed from the search engine.

As far as I remember, I would be double checking everything. Asking a friend or two to check most work that I would do before I submitted it to the designated person, and life gave me every reason to do this. Yes, I like to make my life tiring. Would you like to hop on this train to overworking and eventually burn out? 

At my worst, I feel like I am the only person who is struggling when everyone else seems to have mastered this thing called life. Little hiccups would throw me off-track. During the good days, I dread the bad days that are sure to follow. 

Having lived all my life worrying about the littlest of things, or being 'too emotional' (a term I have often noticed people use when they are at fault but accountability is out of question), I felt exhausted at some point. I was a negative ball of energy, at least during that short period. When I told my father that I worry about everything and how I felt bad that I was worrying about them, my father labelled it as a 'concern' and said that I was strong.

The exhaustion took me back to when I was young. I gave my first speech in a morning assembly when I was in class two titled 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy'. Seems too advanced for a class two student during my time? You are correct. My father wrote me the whole speech because I wanted to make an impression. I thought I nailed it only to find that it was far from that. No one heard a thing I said because my voice was too low. Then I remember working on raising my voice from then on and that is how I have ended up with this loud voice. I tried it again the next year but I do not recall how that one exactly went but I do remember feeling I was doing better than the last. Some days, I would just give up, put out the bare minimum and that would leave a sour taste. Being told it was disappointing. Being told I can do better. Being told that was not me.

It is rare that I feel I put out the best. "Did I stutter?" "Did you notice my hands shade while holding my paper?" I ask. Most days, to my surprise, I am usually described as confident and even stern. 

However, when I do feel that I put out the best I could, such as when after some of my presentations, I just glide back to my seat and feel myself floating halfway through the ceiling, struggling to ground myself. Full of confidence. 

To my college days, I would ask my father to take a look at my email write-ups before I hit 'send'. My father would suggest I just send it but being a loving father, he would never refuse to take a look and give me a green signal. Sometimes, I would correct some of my friend's email write-ups and give them the green signal.  

Likewise, some days, I love the camera and make my way to anyone holding one up, photobombing. Some days, I avoid cameras as if they would expose all of my insecurities. 

Some days, I feel like a kind person, other days a horrible one.

A person, I think, is not only weak or strong, good or bad, and confident or unconfident. Today I am a mixture of this, tomorrow I am a mixture of that. Today I am purple, tomorrow I am orange and the next day, I am both. A person is a vast sky, the entire universe. A person is a sophisticated jumbling of everything. A person is beautiful.