Confidence Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

I am not a hypocrite. My mother is a hypocrite, just like she was an alcoholic; and I revile the two things in the same way, and I have ever sought not to become either. But there is one way in which I am not taking my own advice, one way in which I am not ‘being my honest self’ or ‘living my truth’ and this that story.

I am a freak. I always have been, I suspect from the moment I was born. I certainly know that I had become a freak by the age of seven or eight. I already knew that I liked girls, and boys; I was too smart for my own good, causing trouble in class that I do not remember, out of boredom that resulted in me being IQ tested and later labelled as gifted; I was suffering strange sleep patterns and insomnia and experienced sleep debt so severe that for the first time I touched that hideous part of my subconscious that I knew was pure madness. I pushed the other children away, and they pushed back. I never had much in common with them anyway and the few short friendships that I had ended torridly. I was always polite and open minded and capable, but I didn’t have any friends. They knew I was a freak so I spent all my time alone, wondering why no-one liked me. I tried to transform myself in high school, equally resigned to being a nerd and yet enticed by the possibility of popularity. In the end I was too outré for either crowd. I fell in love with a girl, again. It ended torridly, again. Near the end I found some people who didn’t mind my company, they let me build computers with them and I let them look up my skirt. It never went in any direction I wanted it to. A freak, again. But from a small sample size very easily do you find abnormalities. And so it was when I moved from my small country town to the big city, I eventually found some people I can now genuinely call friends. Fellow freaks, who have helped me cultivate further eccentric interests. What I am trying to say, is that I have always let my freak flag fly. I have forgone friends, love, and probably in the case of my employment and employability, money and power too – all in the name of my irrepressible individuality.

I was invited out one night for drinks, as I so rarely am, and I was introduced to a friend of a friend whom I shall call Mia. And the conversation went down like this:

I talked about my handyperson skills and my home decorating, my motorcycle and my archery and later about my fiancé, my sexuality and my polyamory. And Mia was very impressed and taken by it all. She said that she had been questioning a few things recently, but just feeling like she was staying in the same comfortable place, but that meeting me and hearing about my crazy have-it-all life had given her just the uplift she needed. And then she said to me something that will stick with me always, she said she had constantly been one of those moderately popular girls, one of the ones who had always gone along with the crowd and just generally lived a normal life. She’d had the life that I sat pining for, gazing out the bus window while I was incessantly bullied and agonisingly friendless. And yet here we were, in the same bar, talking. And she says, ‘I thought I was doing the right thing, I just went along with what everybody else was doing and just got carried along by it, never really thinking about what I wanted. And so now, I’m not really sure who I am and what I want and I don’t really know where to begin outlining that. I really wish I had been one of those kids like you who had the courage to stand up for what I believed in, and who liked the things that they liked and did what they wanted, popularity be damned. I wish I’d always known who I was, and not let anyone or their opinions stand in my way.’ And it just broke my heart and made it in the same instant. The fact that she existed, that she exists (and hence many more girls like her must) – a self-confessed popular girl looking back on her teenage years and saying, I wish I’d been more of a freak; I wish I’d tried harder to be me rather than accepted. The sadness that I felt for her, yet the feeling of fulfilment that came from having my teenage regrets and doubts allayed… I wanted to cry and hug her. The world needs more girls like Mia. Or maybe I just needed to know that there were girls like Mia in the world.

But I am a hypocrite.

I’d been talking to my singing teacher who’d told me that I could do my vocal exercises with perfect pitch, if I let myself. He’d seen how my lack of confidence was shooting me in the foot and creating an endless cycle of failure. And I’d told him how I felt like I had this great well of self-justification inside me, this great reserve of confidence that I didn’t feel I could use yet. Like if I actually got up on a stage to perform, I would be transformed by it and I would go for it heart and soul and nothing could touch me. But lately I had begun to fear that so many years of self-enforced modesty, humility, bashfulness and even self-flagellation had taken that away; that I had been so wounded by people’s criticisms of my singing and I had so withdrawn into this shell of self-deprecation that there wasn’t actually anything more to me than self-pity and disbelief in my own talent.

I lay alone in bed one night wondering why I continually failed to seize the moment with my singing, why I didn’t have that confidence that people told me would so enable me to perform at my best. But most pertinently, I thought: what would happen if I just decided tomorrow was the day, tomorrow was the day that I was just going to reach down into that well of confidence and perform with total self-assurance? And it scared me so much. My first thought was that I would need an excuse. I would need to have started on some sort of medication like an anti-depressant, or started having therapy, or reading a book that was telling me to think in a new way, or had a religious experience, or had one of my idols tell me that my voice had merit – I would need a justification for my sudden change of heart. But my mind kept asking me the same question, but what would happen? No excuses, what would actually happen? I thought, people would like me less, people would think I was an arrogant twat. But, beginning at the beginning, would my singing teacher think that? If I walked into the next lesson and not once chastised myself for failing to hit a note and just powered through the whole hour with total self-possession and confidence, would he think less of me? Why should he? It doesn’t seem like a realistic thing for a person to do, nor is it in keeping with his even-handed and kind approach. But oh, god how the rationality fights with the trauma. But it would make me so uncomfortable to do that, to subject him to my confidence, it would be so uncomfortable for him, surely he’d be embarrassed for me, this nigh-talentless excuse of a student suddenly carrying herself with all the airs of someone who thinks they’re good? Doesn’t it just make you turn away? Doesn’t your face burn in sympathetic shame when someone hopeless gets up on television (Idol/The Voice/The X Factor/Got Talent) and acts like they’re amazing? But why, why do we do that? Why do we burn with shame when we see someone crap act like they have talent? Why do we dislike people who carry themselves with what we feel is unjustified or unearned confidence? Because we feel they have no right to be confident. We don’t think they’re any good, so we feel they have no right to feel good about themselves. Just think about that though. How awful is it? Humans are such nasty creatures. Our opinions so quickly become something that seeks to divest people of their worth sometimes.

But confidence isn’t a gift you get given by other people. It’s something that some people desperately, viscerally, subconsciously seem to want to take away from you sometimes, but it’s not something you get given. I mean, what if I got one of my excuses for confidence, what if Amanda Palmer heard me sing one of my songs and told me that I was great? Would I acquire confidence then? Would I believe myself talented? Would I be hit on the head with the wand of legitimacy and be henceforth prepared to go out in the world assured of my skill and worth? It’s not that I’m scared of the Fraud Police. I’m not scared that I’m going to be dobbed in for not ‘having a real job,’ or for misusing my adult life, or that someone will find out I have no idea what I’m doing. It’s that my confidence, should I chose to muster it, might be rendered illegal.

If I stopped answering the question “Can you sing?” with concessions like “I like to think I can,” or “I like to sing,” or “A little bit, maybe” I think people might start to hate me. If I started to say that I was talented, that I could do X or Y or sing this song well or that song in a way I liked more than the original, people would probably think I was a vainglorious arsehole. I’m wary that I could end up disliked, disapproved of and deserted. I’ve had so little in the way of people who like me in my life and I feel like my singing and my confidence in it has the potential to be an ugly burden, something that drives away the people I already have in my life and prevents any more from getting close. I’m scared that the only thing worse than my terrible singing is my terrible singing delivered with arrogance. Better to be a merely a bad singer than a bad singer who thinks they’re hot shit. Worse still it’s a scenario where my last hope turns on me and becomes my damnation. The confidence that so many have told me would allow me to fulfil my potential and uplift me from the mundane becomes instead a menace that reveals me to be egotistical and insufferable, further distancing me from my happiness.

But the artists that I respect, do people think of them in the same way? Well, I’m sure some people do, but by and large people are prepared to accept that really talented people are actually talented I guess. But, am I talented? I’m happy for people to tell me that I am talented in other ways. I am a talented cook. This is probably my number one skill and I am almost always accepting of praise for my cooking. I’m forcefully gracious at times, but I have been known to declare that I am a great cook. I am also a very good handyperson. I can fix just about anything around the home, I practically built a house, I build furniture and computers, and I do wiring, plumbing, flooring, plastering and paving. I’m very good with computers all round. I’m a good writer. I’m great in bed. I’m a good seamstress. I debate well. These are things I can accept praise on. My singing is not one of them. Tell me 15 things you loved about the way I just sang my new song and one tiny minor thing that I could work on – and I will dwell on the criticism, clutching it as proof that I will never be any good. Objectively I will tell you that I don’t mind the criticism, I don’t think perfection is realistically attainable and I still do want to improve – I don’t think I’m perfect so why should anyone else. I won’t take criticism badly per se, it’s just that in my heart that’s all that I will heed. The praise will never lift me up and give me confidence, but the critique will always ‘take me down a peg.’

I’m very ready to hear unfavourable judgments. The only thing that I have had less of in my life than friends, is self-love. When people tell me I suck, a little part of me always believes them. And I’m scared that eventually I’ll believe them so much that I’ll know in my soul that I’m awful at singing, and I will give up, and there will be no more singing in my life. And it will destroy me, because despite all the turmoil, singing brings me pleasure. I’m scared if I open up too much, and let the confidence out, it will let the opinions in – and the rising tide of opinions will eventually become evidence, and that evidence will show that my singing is unpalatable, my efforts wasted and my dream hollow.

It’s one of those traps I think. You have to have experience to get a job, but you have to get a job to gain experience. You have to have some confidence in order to put more confidence out there, so when people inevitably tear that down, you can keep standing. My potential for confidence in my singing feels like a big empty box that might have a tiny frightened bird down the bottom, or giant monster, or nothing at all. And one sudden movement could mean my bird fitfully flies away forever or I become consumed by either the monster or the nothingness.

And here’s the kicker, here’s the moral of the story: I’m letting the enemy win the war before the battle has even been fought. By not seizing my confidence, I’m telling the world that I don’t own my confidence, I’m handing the rights over to them. I’m giving them the whole damn box. I’m saying, you’re right about me, I’m terrible at this, I’m worthless. You haven’t even heard me sing properly, but I don’t even deserve to try. I forfeit my right to confidence. 

“Better not to have tried and to live always in hope, than to have tried and live the rest of your life in the shadow of your failure.” A maxim that I coined for myself a while ago, the depressing inverse of “better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all.”

So I’m a hypocrite. I’ve been myself through everything, through primary school and high school and uni, and with my friendships and relationships and jobs and home and family. I’ve said fuck it, this is me, you don’t like it, that’s your problem. I’ve told many a person that this approach would benefit their lives. I’ve preached many times on the sickening scourge of repression and conformity, and by and large, I’ve never let the bastards win. I didn’t let them take my sexuality, or tell me how to dress, what words I should use, what skills I was allowed to possess, or who I should vote for – but I let them tell me I can’t be confident about my singing. I let them take my dream from me.

I tried to write a song on the topic of this blog, about this whole idea that I am allowing people to deny me my confidence. I tried to imagine how it would make me feel if the message was a little more direct, if people were actually trying to stop me from singing, and how I would rail against that, in the hope that this idea would crystallize how I felt about singing and make me push through despite any criticism or fear. But the song and the resolve haven’t happened yet.

So what does that mean for me now? Well, only my partner, my friends and singing teacher can tell me what they would think if I suddenly started being confident in my singing. If I want to know, I could just ask, instead of sitting in front of the computer dwelling on necessarily conflagrated suppositions of their opinions. But I know, asking them would be a cop out. And it is likely that they can’t even imagine what it would be like. And it’s probably all in the delivery. So I’d just have to show them. And the only way I’m going to know if I have a great reserve of confidence in me is if I reach for it. I’ll let you know if I find a tiny bird, a monster or nothing at all.