-3,5k words-
I’ve struggled with my confidence for the longest time, something that I’m sure many other girls can relate to. For as long as I could remember, I’ve let others run everything in my life. Maybe it was because of the way I looked.
Even at 26, I was smaller than the average woman, petite and thin. I had just enough curves to be correctly identified as an adult woman, but not enough to compare to others my age, nor to attract the male gaze. I was far from the féminin ideal. Men passed by me daily and women weren’t threatened by my presence.
At the very least, I’d been with a few men before, so I wasn’t totally inexperienced with the other gender. Though, it had been nothing more than flings and hookups.
That much, though it hurt me to no end, I could deal with.
What I could not deal with, was my lack of confidence and general urgency over my actions. At times I felt more like a third-party passenger than an actual person. I’d let others decide things about me that they should have no agency over, without ever being able to muster any pushback. Yeah, I was that bad.