Confidence

Self love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self neglecting.

William Shakespeare

Let’s talk about being confident. It’s easy for some, and very hard for others. I think it’s somewhere in between for me. My confidence and how I felt about myself changed a lot after I was diagnosed. If you’re not chronically ill, you probably won’t understand what I’m going to say next, but I want to tell you how I feel. I hate my body. Not for how it looks, I’m very comfortable in my own skin, but for what it cannot be. It’s not a body that can get down the stairs easily, it’s not the body that isn’t swollen 24/7, and it’s not the body with the immune system that doesn’t attack itself. It’s a body that in a lot of ways is broken. But it’s my body, and I have to love and accept it, no matter how hard it is to do. And I’ve gotten better at it, thanks to therapy, and support from my family and doctors. I wish there was a handbook about living with chronic illnesses, but there’s not, so I just have to figure things out on my own, as I go along. Being open about my life and my struggles has helped me so much with my confidence. I honestly have no shame about what I’m going through when it comes to talking about it (example: I’m not embarrassed to let everyone know that I had to get a steroid shot in my butt cheek yesterday, here’s hoping it helps my severe joint pain). Obviously no one knows what goes on behind closed doors and in my head, I struggle a lot, but I have to be honest about my journey. Something that helps me feel confident is dressing nice when I leave the house. I love fashion, and it’s something that’s helped me express myself. Whenever I go to work, dinners, hockey games, I always try to look nice. But when I’m in my house it’s pajamas and messy buns (life is all about balance right??). My life motto at this point is “fake it till you make it”, how I look on the outside is usually the complete opposite of what I feel like on the inside, but that’s okay. Something else I struggle with is that I’m terrified to date. I don’t put myself out there because I’m afraid of how guys will react when I tell them about my health problems. I know I’m probably being a little bit dramatic, but it’s how I feel. I saw my psychiatrist yesterday and he told me, “you face looks so bright today, you don’t look like that depressed girl that came into my office a year ago”, so I guess I have that going for me, in a weird way it’s definitely a confidence boost. At the end of the day, I struggle with my confidence, and accepting the way that my body is. I try to overcome small things everyday, and I think I do a pretty good job at it, but there’s room for improvement no matter what it is. I’m especially thankful for my sister Anabelle in all of this confidence stuff. She tells me everyday that I look like “a whole snack”, I still don’t know if I believe it all of the time, but I appreciate the effort. I want everybody who struggles with their confidence, no matter the reason, to know that you are beautiful, and special, and worthy of all the good things in this world. I’m thankful that I wake up everyday, even in a body that I feel is broken, because it gets me through every single day no matter what. In this life you have to be thankful for the small things, I know I am.