Monday, May 23, 2011

Smiling Self-Esteem Booster

Ever since I was in kindergarten, I've had incredibly low self-esteem. I spent most of my high school years asking every person I met or knew, "do you hate me?"  This was quickly followed by an, "I'm sorry."  I'm amazed that I even had friends given that I literally didn't know any words beyond those six.  If I could curl myself up like a rollie-pollie, I would've. 

Over the years, I've slowly acquired further reaching verbal skills, poise and self-love.  Externally, I've been on the up and up.  In the back of my mind, however, I've endured a nagging doubt about my worth.  Every social interaction has been peppered with self-doubt and flagellation.  In private, I analyze every part of myself.  Am I a good enough writer?  Does my hair look alright?  How long before everyone finds out I'm a total fraud? 

All that doubt goes away when I see this face:



How could I feel bad about myself when she looks at me like that?  I'm raised up from the mire of self-doubt and become the funniest, most intelligent, beautiful and important human being in the world.

5 comments:

  1. and more seriously, this is one of the amazing things about the survival skills of children - they're complete leeches with nothing on their side but making us love them and take care of them, and it totally works because of things like this.

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  2. It really is! It's hard 90% of the time to have to be completely responsible for another human, but the 10% of amazingness completely outweigh the rough times. It makes them feel like nothing.

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  3. This was so sweet and it made me teary.

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  4. oh man. now im crying in ecuador. it's weird because I already loved Darla without having met her, but now I am actually thankful to her! I have known for years that you are the funniest, most intelligent, beautiful and important human being in the world and i feel eternally grateful to Darla for showing you that too! Just read this again when she is a teenager and is acting the way that we did at that age :/

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