Sometimes when I’ve been playing Candy Crush for hours before bed, I start to dream that I’m playing in my sleep. Or when I’ve been binge watching Veep, my thoughts take on the cadence of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s signature delivery. I’ve heard that watching a lot of movies changes the way we think—not like it changes our minds about things, but in a formal sense, like we start thinking and acting like characters in a film. I think the same concept applies to reading a lot of fiction, and I think that being a massive fiction nerd as a kid is why I’ve convinced myself for a long time that I’m “confident.”
The great thing about literature is that it’s not about images. (I mean, it is, but you know what I mean.) You make it up in your head, and everything has more context than could possibly be conveyed-without-text, as in language, as in writing. Things can be beautiful and interesting conceptually, and what they would really look like doesn’t matter so much. For example: I, as a child, loved to walk alone along the beach and think about how I would describe the breeze in my hair, the colours of the ocean, the salty smell. In my lime green crocs and bermuda shorts and old woman haircut that my grandmother forced me to get, I could feel beautiful by framing life with text. I felt intriguing, mysterious, interesting, alluring, because I was writing from my own perspective in my head. Making yourself the main character, I’ve found, is an effective way of creating internal validation. I matter because I’m me, my perspective is at the forefront.
“You’re so Greek. You’re obsessed with living your life like it’s art.” - ex boyfriend R, 2017
I don’t know if adopting this perspective came before or after, or concurrent with, the realization that I was ugly. I mean, not hideous—I had a vague understanding that I was skinny, and that had value, so I wasn’t at the absolute bottom of the middle school food chain. But I was not pretty enough to be popular, or to negate my off-putting personality and bad style and firmly lower middle class status. I lived the grade 6 nightmare: my best friend entered middle school and became popular, and I started getting bullied. This started me exaggerating my weirdness, embracing it, dressing obnoxiously to show everyone how little I cared about fitting in. I rejected any markers of social acceptance, because I couldn’t access those things anyways. My mother, hospitalized for depression, could not teach me about makeup or fashion. My father, working three jobs, wore black jeans and blue button-down shirts every single day. The social capital that I had to work with, I felt, was being quirky. Acting out for attention and then pretending I didn’t care when other kids made fun of me gave me control over the narrative. And my inner narrative was what made me value myself.
“You’re not very cultured, are you?” - friend L, 2012
“Pretentious hipster bitch.” - A, 2012
As a teenager I felt mortified that I had the audacity to exist. That people seemed to think I was full of myself made it even worse. I felt like if I had any self-respect at all, I would kill myself—to show the world, look, I know. I see it too. I’ll take care of it. I was too scared, though, so I never tried. I just kept inflicting myself on the world and trying not to seem like I was under any illusions about my value, while of course trying constantly to construct the opposite narrative for myself. It’s funny that I felt this way most strongly when I was a baby feminist, unlearning my internalized misogyny, because it never occurred to me that I was only buying into sexism by believing so strongly that I was like, “uppity” or something. That I was ugly and stupid, and yet vain and self righteous. Men and women and NBs alike have loved to tell me over the years that I am full of myself, ex-partners especially. And at the risk of being obvious, I don’t think that if a man, say, talked about liking Radiohead and reading classics, he would have been criticized the way that I was. I don’t think he would be self conscious. I think he would be “thoughtful,” “artsy,” “sensitive.” But because I’m a woman, I’m presumed to perform for others no matter what I do. When was the last time you heard a man accused of being a pick-me, or a main character? I think these terms, useful as they may be within feminine communities for addressing internalized misogyny, have been weaponized to an alarming degree, in ways I felt but couldn’t understand at seventeen.
“Were you sitting outside reading in the rain? Wow, aren’t you such a main character.” - ex partner G, 2022
“I mean, you’re obviously not a ten.” - ex partner D, 2022
So it feels like writing is the only thing I can control, and for that reason I cling to it and have been averse to sharing it with anyone. Social media is an extension of that, a way of writing about my life with visuals. It’s why I’m so mortifyingly, unendingly active on Instagram. The appeal of ig for me isn’t the external validation of likes, but my desperation to portray myself in a way that I like. I think I’ve trained myself to not care very much what others think of me, over a lifetime of building calluses against it. But if others don’t like me, then I need to like myself. And I often don’t. I try to feel hot, I try to do the kinds of things I think are cool, I try to not rely on friends’ approval before doing what I think I should do, saying what I think or saying nothing at all. I try to YOLO as a verb, do it for the plot, be the main character, because I have to. Look weird, get tattoos, be gay, write, frame myself the way I want to be seen. I think I am a hard person to like, but somebody (me, poor bastard) has to do it.
I don’t know how to stop obsessing over myself, writing about myself, subjecting you all to my thoughts. I still feel seventeen, stuck with myself, justifying my continued existence. I think I need to assure myself that I like myself, because I need internal validation, because external validation never did much for me. I’m fucking insufferable, honestly. I think I’m better than people who like Marvel movies, but it’s charming that I like Twilight. I bring up my Master’s degree at every opportunity. I humble-brag about being sexually active in a way people who are assured that they’re attractive never do. I never act like I want to be anyone’s friend. I’m not “nice.”
“When I first met you I thought you were a huge bitch. You’re judgemental. I noticed that right away.” - ex partner G, 2022
And worst of all, by writing all this down and unburdening myself, I’m only doing more of the same. Surely if I would admit all these terrible qualities of mine, I must be an okay person? I’ve been trying to write a narrative about myself that I like for my entire life. My friends know I’ve journaled consistently for over a decade. I’ve been alternating between blips of confidence when the story works, and dead zones of worthlessness, which becomes self harm and martyrdom, which makes me think I can’t actually be full of myself if I would hurt myself this much, right? But isn’t that just me telling myself I’m good again? Isn’t it masturbatory? If you really were only doing it for yourself, you would hide it. This applies to everything, more or less. And I’m not modest, not a Madonna; I’m firmly in the whore camp.
“I think you give off an air of moral superiority, and have a tendency to brag, because you deeply want to be seen. But under that you possess the qualities you want seen. Which is why you broadcast them in the first place.” - ex boyfriend R, 2023
I’m making some progress, growing up a little. I started admitting to people that I like writing, that maybe I could take myself seriously, which feels like stripping naked at the bus stop. I joined a writing group where people much smarter and harder-working than me treat my work as though it’s worth making better. I spend a lot of time socializing because I can’t analyze myself and be myself at the same time. I’ve tried to be as honest as I know how to be. I try not to write off what others think of me anymore, even when it hurts, even when I want to believe they’re wrong. Internal validation isn’t enough, and I need to stop pretending it is. I crave approval as much as anyone else. As much as I want to just say “Haters make me famous” and move on, I’m pretty sure nobody really means that. I try to take criticism seriously, and forgive myself when they’re right, but remember that they aren’t, always.
I think I’ve been trying to like myself in spite of myself for my entire life. That’s as close to confidence as I can get, because if writing this little essay has taught me anything, it’s that trying to craft a narrative around yourself will probably result in paradox. So hopefully now I can stop writing these treatises, get over myself, and just do cool shit instead.
<3