Confidence

Confidence makes such a difference in your life. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “fake it till you make it”. That’s impossible to do without confidence. It’s something that has eluded itself from me for most of my life. Maybe if you met me now you wouldn’t think so, and I’ve made great strides in looking like I have confidence. But I still don’t. It’s something that’s rooted very deep within me. 

It’s hard to have confidence when you grow up with your father telling you that you’re a piece of shit. Good for nothing. Won’t amount to anything. Stupid. Idiot. Zit filled pizza face. Failure. Can’t do anything right. Not an ounce of talent. Not good at anything. How could anyone love you? 

I heard this from my father as early as I can remember. Whenever I tried to do something that I thought would earn his approval or make him proud, he’d turn around and spit in my face. I can’t sing well. But I love singing. Always have. I grew up with my father convinced he was the fifth Beatle. It was only misfortune that he wasn’t born in the UK at the same time and place as the fabulous four, because if he were, it would have been the fabulous five. The thing was, he wasn’t a good singer or songwriter. Extremely mediocre at best. But when I was growing up, to lavish him with anything but praise would have been to earn some type of ingenious punishment. Now that, he was good at. 

When I was 10, we had this tape recorder that you could hook up a microphone too and it would slightly amplify your voice over whatever cassette tape you were playing. The Moody Blues were one of my father’s favorite bands, and since I liked singing, I decided to practice one of his favorite songs. I knew them all by heart anyway, because they were always playing in our house since I was young. So I grabbed that tape recorder, a mic, and a copy of Nights in White Satin and practiced. And practiced. And practiced. 

I too, was mediocre at best, but I was trying. When I was ready, I decided to sing it for my parents. Something I learned that I was sure would make my father happy because it was a song he loved. The sun hung low in the late afternoon summer sky, with the orange light filtering through the trees onto the long porch of our house where I sat on a bench at one end, underneath some hanging flowers in a scene that looked like it came out of an English garden.

And I sang. Before I could get to the refrain, my father burst out laughing. I sucked, he said. I was terrible. I was butchering the song and it was hilarious to him that I was trying and failing so miserably. As my mother sat on the bench next to me probably dying inside, my father - standing in front of us because he had only stopped briefly to make a minute or two for me - cackled as he walked away, making fun of his own son. My mother tried to make me feel better, but it was just another knick in the thin armor that was my self confidence. I felt like shit. Again. 

Growing up with such a lack of self confidence is terrible. Like a lot of other childhood trauma, it affects you as an adult and it’s hard to ever run away from. I didn’t have much self confidence to begin with that late August afternoon, and it continued to be destroyed. I always felt like I was worthless because my father told me I was worthless and made it abundantly clear I would never amount to anything. Only he was special. Only he deserved praise. The best I could wish for, was to serve him without question and hope to get a trickle of his wonderfulness. 

The one year I was in school - first grade - was horrible. I was small ever since I was born and was the smallest in my class. I wore glasses. My hair looked silly. And I felt nothing good about myself. The only friend I had at school was my older brother, a grade above me, and I was constantly bullied. Nobody would play with me. I’d get laughed at, beat up at recess, knocked down and trod upon. I remember hiding in the corner of the building outside waiting for recess to be over so I could get out of this horror of “fun time”. I just wanted to go back to class, where nobody could kick or punch me or smash my glasses on the ground. From the age of six, I felt this immense sense of despair and hopelessness. 

This is something that does not go away easily. 

Now, being a parent myself, something I have tried so hard to instill in my son is a sense of self confidence. He has known, from his earliest memory, how much I love him, how much I support him, how proud I am of him, how special he is to me, and how much I believe in him. 

Yet, like I was, he is small, which means he gets picked on at school. The other day, he told me that he tried to join a game of tag at recess at school, but because he doesn’t run fast he always was caught and always became the person to tag others but couldn’t because he couldn’t catch anyone. So he ran away and hid in a bush and waited until recess was over. 

On another day, he said he was playing by himself pretending he was a Power Rangers character, just minding his own business. An older kid game by, laughed at his game, and shoved him to the ground. He had the courage to tell a teacher who appropriately intervened, but the damage to his self confidence was done.

Hearing him tell me these stories broke my heart. Here I am, trying to give him everything I didn’t have in a father, trying to give him as much self confidence as possible, but yet he is stuck with some of the same struggles I was. I know I cannot protect him from the cruelness of this world. Of people. But I want to. I would do anything to protect him from it all. 

At the very least, I want to protect him from the damage that a lack of self confidence can wreck. Yet, sometimes it seems I am failing no matter how hard I try. That is a feeling worse than anything. I’ll continue to try my utmost to instill in him confidence. To never treat him like my father treated me. To always support and love him. To have his back 100% to the day I die. I hope it’s enough to give him a better shot in life than I had.