I haven't always been this nice to myself. It has taken me years to build a rapport with my inner voice and be able to believe in myself. I could say in the fall that I really had confidence in myself, what I do as a profession, and as a person in general. I began to get comfortable with who I am and what I believe in despite the fact that other people constantly try to change me to fit their mold. I came across this wonderful quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson,
“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
When I think about it, I have been misunderstood my whole life, and for most of my life I've tried really hard to deny that part of myself and be the same as everyone else, or at least what everyone else wanted me to be. With different people I was a different me. That became very tiring. Eventually I just had to break away from that, discover who I was and accept it. 27 years later I think I started getting to that place. At 28 I got there. I can truly say that I became comfortable with who I am...all aspects of who I am. Even though some of those aspects may greatly challenge the beliefs and attitudes of others. I don't fling it around in their faces, but I know in my heart that it's okay to be who I am. I found great comfort in that and a huge weight was lifted from my soul.
Now at 29 that wonderful confidence is being inundated with negativity. Without revealing too much, I will just say that there are some people in the world who are too power hungry to have a heart. They are too involved with their own selfish deeds to give a care about any person genuinely. Me being the kind of woman that I am, a fighter for the rights of myself and others, an advocate for those who cannot or will not advocate for themselves...have found myself at odds with a power hungry and evil person. What makes it more difficult is that this person is in a position of power and they are using it to try to beat me down. They try to rip my confidence to shreds, cause me to doubt myself, and are trying to make me want to just give up on this dream that I have worked towards my whole life. I hate to admit that there have been times that I felt that this person might be winning.
Thankfully though, I have some really amazing friends, family, and husband. These are the people who have kept my hope afloat through all this. I'm finding that this person has only put a little chink in my armor, but I am still the same person and still standing strong. In the end I will not go down without a fight and my confidence will remain intact. : )
