Me

Life lived in the in-betweens is rough. You're frozen until you can move on and granted an extended grieving time for the past. No matter how you occupy your time, your brain and your body know where you are. You're in the middle; the frustrating, never fulfilling, limiting middle. It could even drive a person to get defensive and post an angry reminder of their worth. That snap could happen at any time. Like, say, yesterday.

But we've gotten past that and I've remember that I can be an absolute dweeb sometimes and that not everyone I currently interact with has interacted with me on a full-time basis the past eight years. Everyone gets a pass. But I'm leaving the post up because confidence is not something that's easy to come by, especially in the in-between, and that anger in the previous post exudes the self-knowledge that eventually leads to confidence. 

I currently have the confidence of negative space- I'm only confident when I don't know there's a reason not to be. Take performing, for example. I've popped up on stages since I was 5 with no nervousness, ready to do my thing, because I never really thought about what would happen if I messed up. I didn't have the concept of an entire audience laughing at me- everyone I've ever been in front of has either been unconditionally supportive or apathetic. But I've since learned how often I don't hit the right note and exactly how far my guitar skill stretches, and gaining that knowledge now means that I sweat and shake when I'm playing 2-chord songs in front of a room of children under the age of 8. Lovely. 

I could trace other things back and watch my confidence erode away as awareness floods its way through my brain, but productivity does not lie that way, so instead, I'd like to grace you with more of me. Un-curated, unabashed me. 

Not in chronological order.

This is every picture of me from West Wishes that wasn't a duplicate. There's, what, 150 of them? I have always hated posing for pictures- they look fake, they're cheesy, they're not a real representation of any situation, blah blah blah. I mean, I went to Europe for two months and there's maybe twenty pictures with me in them. But this year, I jumped in front of everything I could. The Sparkly Blue Dress helped, of course, because I had to take those pictures, but I don't think it makes up more than a third of the pictures. We live in the age of the selfie, when everyone has to take a picture of themselves in front of something and bemoan that all you want, but at least we find ourselves worthy of documentation. At least there's that.