Confidence

Anyone who knows me would say the one thing I lack is confidence, in fact some people from my past might claim that I  suffer from over confidence sometimes. Little do they know that in the past I've battled with self confidence to the degree where it almost crippled my day to day life.

It's something that I have touched on before and  it's not nice to admit but there have been times in the past that I've really struggled mentally. I've made no secret that I've seen a therapist and it has helped but now I can look back at certain points of my life and realise that I was struggling but didn't know how to ask for help and from who I needed it from. The stigma has dropped a little bit recently with things like men's mental health month and the C.A.L.M. 

It's always been a part of me, this feeling of inferiority compared to other people, I used to fight my way through, put a smile on my face, laugh at the jokes fired in my direction. When I was at Uni. I used to just get drunk, get loud and play it off like I was in a good place. I used to put up a shield to protect myself, strange haircuts, loud drunken buffoonery, days spent trying to hide what I really felt. Always comparing myself to everyone else and in my own head always coming up short. I was the vice captain of the school football team, meaning someone was better than me. I only got an A on a piece of school work whereas multiple people got an A+. I could list a thousand things here from small things like coming second in a pub quiz to a friend asking a girl out that I liked. All of them contributed to this feeling that I was inferior and that I was getting what I deserved. It was like a cycle, it was one of the reasons I chose to go to Luton, it was a new start, no one knew me but it didn't take long for the same feelings to surface. It didn't really help that within the first six months of being down there I met someone, fell for them big time and watched them get together with someone I knew and had considered a friend.  

I never really confided in anyone, and that includes my soon to be ex wife. I don't think that she had any idea that these thoughts were always in me. That I always felt that I didn't deserve to be with her, that I wasn't good enough for her or anyone for that matter. I always felt it was just a matter of time before I was found out and that I would be pushed aside like I deserved to be. I like to think I had gotten good at hiding my true feelings, I also stopped drinking alot of alcohol when I was around her and our friends, mostly because when I did drink I wouldn't be able to control myself and would announce how I truly felt about things, which I didn't want to deal with simply because I couldn't. So I would like to take this opportunity to say sorry to her in public. It wasn't right of me not to be honest with her and it's something I should have done a long time ago, she deserved that but I wasn't in a place to give her that side of me. 

My friends were clueless as well, anytime I thought about confiding in someone I would rationalise what good would it do me? It wouldn't make a difference at all to me and then the secret would be out, people would look at me in that odd condescending way they do when they know your struggling and tell you things like "it'll be alright"  and other nuggets of pure unadulterated faeces like that. 

Since being in therapy I've realised that a lot of it was inside my own head, there are a few people out there who actually do like me for being me and with those people I've opened up a lot. I've discussed what was going through my head at various points in my life. Brought up incidents that I buried away from my past that I should have faced head on back in the day but failed to do so. I brought up my trip to Grantham station where I nearly did the very stupid thing and explained to them that I thought the world would be a better place without me in it. Rosie has listened to me for hours gently prodding and probing into my memories and thoughts on things. It's helped me no end, having someone to listen to me with no judgement, she's heard the worst of the thoughts that have gone on, she's seen the growth in me, helping me realise that as long as I'm happy then who gives a flying fuck about what other people think.

So that leads me to asking myself am I happy? In general I have to lean towards yes I am happy. I feel better about myself definitely, I know there's a long way to go before I hit my targets, but they are all within me. I don't think any of them are beyond the realms of possibility. I'm a lot more honest with my friends and the people that I care about. I have to say a big thank you to several of them, you know who you are but you have been AMAZING with me. I'm sorry I wasn't honest with you before but going forward don't worry I'll let you know if I start to struggle again. I'm not naive enough to think that it will be plain sailing, I know there are going to be challenges in front of me that will be difficult but with the help of the people around me it's a challenge that I'm up for.