Detrimental Confidence.
August 1, 2024
A man says hi to me as I am walking down the street, I swear he is in love with me. A man in a customer service job is generally nice to me, I swear he is in love with me. A man compliments me, I swear he is in love with me. A man smiles at me, I swear he is in love with me. A man says my name in conversation, I swear he is in love with me. A man likes my Instagram post, I swear he is in love with me. A man views my Instagram story, I swear he is in love with me. A man makes eye contact with me, I swear he is in love with me. A man even looks in my direction, I swear he is in love with me.
I am in love with me, therefore, everyone is in love with me.
I don’t want to say that I am delusional, as I feel that word is an obnoxious buzzword thrown around too often on social media. I think the word deluded might be better. It doesn’t sound so crazy. More just… misled… by my own mind… and feelings…
There comes a point where over-confidence and narcissism (in the social and not clinical sense) intersect. I am confident I am a beautiful girl. Therefore everyone else cannot stop thinking about me the moment they lay their eyes upon me. I am confident I am an interesting person. Therefore everyone else infinitely wants to know more about me and my life and my story after they ask me one simple question. I am confident that I have a good sense of humor. Therefore to everyone else, laughter does not come as easily without me around.
In my heart of hearts, I know this is not true. The majority of people who see me walking down the street do not even give me a second thought. The majority of people who ask me something about myself — whether it be how my day is going or where I am from — are probably just doing so to be baseline nice. The majority of people who hear my jokes probably think I’m a fucking idiot. I know all these things, but god, does it suck when they’re proven right.
This is a phenomenon that I am choosing to call Detrimental Confidence. Sometimes we think so highly of ourselves that when other people don’t immediately fall to their knees in our presence, we question the basic root of our self confidence. In layman's terms: If other people aren’t as focused on us as we are, we doubt if we really are all that great to begin with. What if my confidence is a ruse and no one is falling for it but me? What if I am, like, a deeply unlikable person and everyone knows it, except for myself? What if I am just absolutely oblivious to the reality of my looks and personality?
It's a vicious cycle: When someone does appeal to and vocally* appreciates the aspects of ourselves that we love, we feel validated to the point that we wonder why everyone doesn’t appreciate them to such a degree. When our self-proclaimed desirable traits are ignored, even by a stranger, even in passing, even if just in our own perception, we spiral. Almost the sense of: Am I not special enough to stop the world in its tracks?
I am going to say something that I know is true but sometimes don’t believe: No one is special enough to stop the world in its tracks. That only exists in books or movies or songs that are written by people (like me) who wish that were the case.
You are not everyone’s cup of tea. Some people don’t even like tea.
Realizing that I will never be everyone’s cup of tea is the most devastating and liberating discovery of my life. Knowing this sucks. But knowing this also comes hand-in-hand with knowing it isn’t a bad thing. Accepting you aren’t everyone’s cup of tea doesn’t mean you suddenly lose all your desirable traits that you built up well-deserved confident about. It simply gives us perspective and helps us cope when we perceive that we have been rejected or ignored in some way. When they don’t cross a crowded party to dance with you. When they don’t dart across a busy street to compliment you. When they do not fall to their knees because of your exuberant greatness! Because we are told so often that we have to love ourselves because we are soooooo special, we forget that other people and preferences and situations exist. We forget that not everyone is always thinking about us. This is probably mainly because they are so wrapped up in thinking about themselves — just like we are.
And you know what? Many of the people I hold closest — most of the people most impactful in my life — my heart hardly skipped a beat the first time I saw them. I don’t mean this in a mean way at all. It’s just that sometimes you don’t know how much someone is going to mean to you upon first glance. Sometimes, you are blind.
I had multiple classes with my first love before I ever acknowledged he existed and then even set him up with my friend for the prom before we dated. I wasn’t super close with my closest friends from high school until we were nearing the end of it, and now we talk almost every single day. One of them admittedly thought I was a massive bitch upon first meeting, in fact. My only significant college romance started off with me not even remembering his name for the first few weeks of knowing each other and referring to him only by the state he was from.
All of these preliminary feelings were utterly wrong. These are the people who make my world stop. The people I would cross a crowded party for. The people I would get hit by oncoming traffic to compliment. The people I would fall to my knees for. All these things, I would have done/would do for them now without a second thought; all these things I would have had no intention of doing when we first met.
Anything “at-first-sight” exists in a rare bubble of urban social mythology. A gossip-based manifestation of Detrimental Confidence. Because if it can happen to a fictitious “real-person,” it should be happening to us, right? If my friend’s sorority sister’s cousin could be approached in a bar by a beautiful man who told her he would marry her, and now they are, in fact, married, why wouldn’t that happen – why isn’t that happening to me? It would have to be because I’m not attractive enough, right! Wrong! Think about it. Do you really know anyone first-hand that anything “at-first-sight” has happened to? Or at least, consider the amount of “at-first-sighters” compared to any alternative.
Yeah. That’s what I thought.
*I say “vocally” because it is important to recognize that people may think all these things but never say them for a variety of (sometimes very good) reasons.