Confidence…

… is something I used to have in spades. When I was a child, I used to love being the centre of attention. I would volunteer to sing a solo or be the lead in the school play, put myself up for school council or take part in a debate.

I would give anything a go, and usually be alright at it, and even if I wasn’t, I wasn’t particularly afraid to fail or make a tit out of myself.  I mean, I used to take my clothes off in pubic and I learned to pole dance on the job. Believe me, that takes some nerve. I went to Oxford and failed my interview there, but even that didn’t faze me too much because I picked up a gay best friend who accompanied me to Bristol where we raised merry hell and worked on the student rag together, becoming life long friends.

When I got older,  I loved dressing up, going to parties, I talked my way into internships, I had mad love affairs, I interviewed strangers, even celebrities as I made my way into journalism. I won scholarships and aced my exams. I was bullheaded and knew my strengths. When I got pregnant I knew I would probably do it pain relief free, because I knew I could probably handle it. This was probably a mistake, but you get the idea…Perhaps it was karma for being such a pain in the ass?

So what’s happened? I can barely leave the house right now. I’ve given up contacting people, even close friends and family. I have a pervasive low level headache, like I’ve been sleeping too much, which, in fact I have been. I have a low tolerance level for noise, activity, pointless social contact, in short, I’ve become a recluse.

It hasn’t happened overnight, but it’s certainly snowballed. My confidence has been eaten away to the point where I feel pointless.

I’ve always been dogged by anxiety and depression. My first major bout started when I was about eight, where I became concerned that some minor fib I’d told at school would be found out and I would be publicly shamed. It was overwhelming. I would feel sick watching cartoons, weep into my cereal, fret until I fell asleep.

Later, my anxiety had more concrete causes. My skin started to plague me, only temporarily relieved by the round of whatever medication I got prescribed for it, all of which inevitably made it worse in the long run. I still suffer today, and facing the world becomes harder every time.

I began having social difficulties, although when I think of it, I don’t ever remember finding it easy. The ‘village’ mentality of institutions has always left me outcast. I’m loyal, never mean, but way too honest, which leaves me vulnerable. One to one, I’m fine, but groups cause me problems, but the sense of being picked on at school gave way to much greater confidence at uni among friendship groups from whom you can pick and choose your acquaintances –  it was easy to avoid those who made you feel unwelcome. I made friends I still keep up with. But even them, I’m losing hold of now our situations are drifting further apart.

I bookended uni by travelling the world, and found relief in only having enough stuff I could carry on your back, but without purpose and occupation I felt no better in Mangalore than I had growing up in Maidstone. Cut adrift after uni, I just wanted to put down roots. Sometimes, now I feel strangled by them, but mostly they do a good enough job in holding me up.

But in the real world, without the centring tasks of study with its  regular, usually positive feedback and support of people who were legally obliged to keep an eye on me,  where simply turning up on time and doing your homework just isn’t enough, I began to wilt, although I was still foolhardy enough to think that determination would get me somewhere in the end. I know now that it does, but lowering your sights saves a lot of disappointment. Life is skewed, and whatever is done to to shield you from it as a child, you’ll be knocked into your place eventually.

Meeting Tom was life changing, but I wonder now if anyone should ever change their life because of someone else. It makes you vulnerable. But then, I already felt vulnerable when he walked in to my stripclub and decided he would take me on for good. Tom was different. He didn’t disappoint me. He was always there, keeping my pecker up, even when I wasn’t hundred percent sure how I felt about him. But he would come when I called, take me places, focus my mind on bigger and better things, and displaced my need for others who rejected me. I became dependent. I started to give up the fight and learned helplessness after growing up too fast. It was too easy, all of a sudden, not to keep an eye on my finances, to leave the DIY, then booking holidays, then cooking, shopping, then getting off my arse to make a cup of tea, to him. What I had liked about him – his tendency to let me have my own way, I began to despise, because it enabled me to become someone I don’t much like. Dynamics can be hard to change.

The kids, while they were young, with their routines and their milestones, gave me focus, something to concentrate on other than myself. But because of it I’m floundering. I used them as an excuses not to face my demons – my nagging career anxiety, my difficult family who need as much understanding as me, the people I’d managed, without ever trying, to upset.

I rally every so often, when I get published, or a job comes my way, but I find it harder and harder to go out into the world and know what it is I want from it. And the world seems much less likely to come to me. I’ve lost my way. I’ve started to think there’s something wrong with me, that, like Jonah, there’s something in my genes that makes the world harder to negotiate. It would certainly explain why my relatives are all so difficult. I increasingly feel uncomfortable in my own skin, but maybe that’s my jeans too. I’m less tolerant, less easy going, less pleasant than I was, but where that always made me feel taken advantage of, now I’m just banging my head against a brick wall.

All the self help books and therapy in the world tell me I can only change myself but that’s not helpful either. Change into what? It would take a different life to make myself sunnier, more light-hearted, friendly. I’m not really sure I can. So what to do? There’s no option but just to keep going, but it is a path with fewer options, with fewer friendly faces along the way. I’m embittered, entrenched, stuck in a rut, and each time it gets harder to yank myself out.

But it’s not sympathy I want. Or antidepressants either. Neither of these do much to help. I know I should practise positive thinking, take more exercise, keep up with friends, volunteer…but I’ve done all these things and they only ever stop me feeling like this for a bit. If I hadn’t got the kids then perhaps I’d lose myself in drugs for a bit or experiment with alcoholism. But even my temporary flirtation with both only made things worse.

I think, for now, I’ll just do something small. Like buy sausages even though I hate them, because Tom can eat them by the string. And try not to pick my face so I can face the world for the school run. There is no remedy, only to hold tight, wait for it to pass like the weather, and not be too embarrassed that you made a cry for help when you were in the eye of the storm.