What Confidence Is Like

I’ve always been a shy person. Ever since I was a child I found it hard to interact with people. Though that is not exactly true really. When you’re little you don’t know any better so it’s easier to just start playing with other kids at nursery without there being that much vocal communication. It’s when you get older it becomes an issue. Unlike other people, I was too shy to talk to others who I didn’t know.

At primary school, everything was still good. I had a friend from nursery move there with me so it wasn’t so bad. Still, there was this thing between girls and boys that you don’t hang out with each other and there’s this divide. Same thing at my school except there was this middle group for the people who were different. I was too quiet and tomboy for the girl group so this was where I was. It was great, I had a group of friends so I still had people to play with. The thing is the classes in Primary school never change so you’re always stuck with the same people from an age earliest of four years old so we were all used to each other and over time the groups began to blend a little bit.

Then we moved to the dreaded high school. Here everything just plummeted. So many primary schools are mixed up in so many different classes that those close groups get ripped apart. People want to mingle with other kids from other schools and then there are the ones who already knew people from other places. It’s chaos. Then there was me. You couldn’t just go up to somebody and suddenly you’re friends. It was a complete start over. How could you even approach someone like that? Unlike other people, I was stuck in the same house group with only one other girl and it was a strained relationship. Still, we stuck together a little bit but she started moving off. I was like a scared little mouse scuttling behind her. She didn’t like that very much. In fact, I heard from a good friend who unfortunately got placed into a completely different class that she would moan about me on the way home. I didn’t care. I felt like I was drowning.

As embarrassing as it is to remember around about the second year I would stay in a toilet cubicle at lunch until the library would open. Fridays were the worst since the library didn't open that day but at least they were serving fish and chips on that day. I hated the large groups of people who would clump together in the street (a place where we went on our breaks and to wait for the bell to ring, hold assemblies and stuff like that) and there was so much noise and laughter. I felt like they were talking and laughing at me. They knew that I was alone, standing by myself and they were looking at me thinking of how much of a freak I was. In reality they probably never noticed me but at the time I felt so cold and small. No confidence in myself at all.

The only time I really felt comfortable was in my room reading my books. From going to having no confidence at all to even a little bit I can tell you what to me confidence is. It’s like a warm flame in the centre of your body and the better you feel about yourself that bigger it grows melting away all the stiffness from your body. Gradually the longer I stayed home it did grow until at night I was so comfortable with myself that I felt that I could do anything. However, the next day would come and I would have to build it up all over again. The saying “thing get better” swam around my mind until became meaningless. The better days just took too long to come but it did. Thank goodness they did.