Be your own superhero

Do you ever feel like you are standing on the edge of the mountain and you don’t know if to jump or let someone push you? Either way, the overwhelming feeling is you are going to fall soon.

I have recently lost my own self. I guess I stopped loving myself the way I used to and it’s sad for me to admit it, but it’s true. Being confident is not an easy job to do. There is more than one aspect to this, and for a woman to doubt herself when the outside world thinks she shouldn’t, it’s specifically difficult. I have lost my silly smile, cheeky responses, spontaneous laugh and mischievous spark in the eye. To be honest, I don’t know why or when, but I stopped believing in myself, and what followed was that others eventually stopped believing in me too. I think the hardest pill to swallow is that I feel unwanted right now. And it’s the third time, during my thirty years when I feel like this. I guess it’ a sad pattern. But the amount of hurt my heart owns is something only a few will understand. I feel fragile and vulnerable. My entire confidence disappeared. I am easily offended by other words. I take things personally. I feel lost in my own pain. And I do want to jump off that cliff myself.

But I am writing about it because there are lots of other women out there who also don’t feel as confident as they used to. And I think it’s important that we talk about it.

It’s not an easy job to be a woman. We are delicate and sensitive. We have more feelings than men. We show those feelings to the outside world so we can be heard and understood. We are born to be mothers, wives, friends, lovers, free spirits, leaders. We are the ones who think of bills to be paid on time and dinners to be cooked. We try to think of everything ahead of time, fighting in the meantime with men to be treated equally. And somewhere, along this life journey of a woman, is the feeling of low self-esteem. Somewhere there, a superhero woman will look in the mirror and wonder where has she lost her flying cape and a protective shield. Her eyes won’t be shiny and happy anymore, her heart will be filled with sorrow and her smile will be gone. She will be hearing whispers of how great she is, and that everyone loves her, but she won’t notice it. In her mind, she is a failure. She is no longer a superhero, but someone who lost a fight. She is draining and slowly dying inside.

That superhero woman is every single one of us. We all experience moments in our lives where we feel vulnerable, and it’s ok to feel like this. But we can’t just simply give up on ourselves yet, because we can’t stop being heroes. We can hear whispers of how important we are, but until we build that confidence back ourselves, nothing will bring our power back. It’s up to every single one of us how we want to live this life, and life is such a pressure gift, we can’t waste it on feeling like failures. We are not failures. We are all incredible in everything we do, and how we think of ourselves only depends on us. It’s funny to think I am writing these words completely not believing in myself, but I have to start picking my broken self up because nobody else will do it for me. I feel like glass which has fallen off the table and broke to millions of pieces, and I have looked at this glass on the floor lying broken hoping someone will clean it for me, completely forgetting I have to sort this mess out myself. I think this is a process that will take time because confidence isn’t built over a couple of days, but what choice do we all have? We have to look in the mirror again and see how beautiful we all are. How stunning we look when we smile and how our eyes are brightening when we think of something positive. We might not be great at everything, but does it really matter? Being happy with your own self is more important than to have a Ph.D. in maths. We don’t have to be great cooks, great mothers, great wives or politicians. If we wake up and fall asleep smiling, life will be a much happier and better place for all of us, regardless if we cooked dinner on that day or not.

I do not have a recipe or a right answer on how to start building your own confidence back, but I know that we don’t need a flying cape or a protective shield to be our own heroes. And it’s ok not to feel like ourselves. This little diamond spark is still within us, it’s just got lost for a little bit, but will be back soon. Just don’t give up and look for it every single day.

Mila