Take a Chance
What does it mean to bet on yourself?
At this point in my life, I’m relearning what it means to trust myself.
If you ask my family, I was the moon. Serene and silent, but full of wisdom that leaked out in moments of tranquility. Not always opening my mouth but when I did speak, I couldn’t stop. Sometimes anxious to what each day would bring, I would bring out a piece of myself when the time felt appropriate. Like a full moon that came out every 30 days, I could shine bright with moonlight during certain nights. I was never small but I was meek. I was scared to show all of myself. I didn’t have the confidence to move forward.
Famously, my mother used to always tell a story to my friends when she would first meet them. Back in elementary school, we had a school dance. My mother was on the parent committee and was one of the chaperones during it. A few hours in, I go missing. My mother, who I get my anxiety from, panicked. She and the other parents, staff members, and kids spent the next 30 or so minutes trying to find me. The search ended after my mother noticed a lonely light in the computer lab. She approached the room slowly to peek inside the room to find my little self dressed up with a book in my hand.
With relief pouring over her, she asked me, “Don’t you want to dance and play with the other kids?” I simply replied, “No that’s okay. I don’t want to bother them.”
Me in a nutshell. I didn’t want to bother other people. I was the kid who wasn’t bullied like that. I had good friends and family, but I just kept to myself to not break the status quo. Wanting to not disturb the peace, I was afraid what others might think of me. Looking back, I wasn’t confident enough to do so. But years later, you’d think I was a totally different person.
If you ask my friends nowadays. I know too many people. The extrovert friend that doesn’t know how to not make friends wherever I go. A sun that burns so bright and loudly that I don’t know when to shut up at all. If I’m quiet, something must be wrong. But they’re wrong again. This persona perfectly pieced together overtime says how much I learned about what can be said about you if you’re quiet.
Once again, I wasn’t bullied but I was left out. I was omitted from conversations and invitations. I remember vividly that I was telling my “friends” that I was moving to North Carolina towards the end of my freshman year of high school during lunch. No one replied usually. I brought it up often hoping someone would care. Tell me that they would miss me. Instead, during that lunch period, a young man who I can’t even remember his said, “Man don’t nobody care about you moving. Shut up bruh.”
If you can imagine what that did to my little teenage heart, it shattered it. But I also made a realization during that moment, that I didn’t know my classmates and they didn’t know me. I was too quiet. Too small. Too dim. I wasn’t enough. So I decided to change that.
Moving in with my dad to Greenville, NC, I knew I needed to change. I used to opportunity to rebrand myself. Becoming brighter. Become someone who could shine in a room and wasn’t forgotten. Or at the very least, cared for. Now, when I first got to North Carolina, I wasn’t this new version immediately but with each passing month, new conversation, I struck up, I was able to go from night to day. Part of it came from observing and learning from other people and friends that took me under their wing. It also took some courage to join clubs and organizations. Part of it was me maturing and learning proper social cues. I wasn’t weird but I was at the same time. I had to become comfortable being exposed.
Overtime, I became the guy that knew everybody. I was everyone’s “friend”, but I noticed I was no one’s best friend. I was still missing a part that was key to getting in and building genuine connection. After a conversation with a friend of mine during college, I finally got it. No one knew me. Specifically, no one knew the real me. I had carefully curated this version of myself that was a good listener, knew certain things about them, a nice party guy, and nice, but no one knew much about me. And to be honest, that was on purpose. I think I was still figuring myself in the midst of getting to know people and for people wanting to just be around me that I was losing parts of myself.
It was weird. I wasn’t fake. I was never being dishonest but I wasn’t being fully me. I spent so much time catering to other people’s needs and wants and loves that I wasn’t fully myself with people. I was the therapist friend that listened but I wasn’t making myself heard. If I wanted a true best friend, I needed to learn how to let people in.
That was the real hard part. I had to learn to balance getting people to know me, while I got to know them. I knew what I liked and what I was into, but I didn’t always know how to accomplish that. I realized that once I started putting myself more, those “friends” I made started to decrease in number. It was hard putting myself first. Learning to consider myself felt too close to begging (shoutout my friend Jade who has a book of the same phrase). It’s hard to do it too but I needed to. I had to be selfish and selfless. I was learning about a new part of myself. I had to take a chance on whether or not people would want to get to know me. I had to be okay with not being comfortable and making my voice the smallest. I had to speak up. Be more. See more. Not for others…but for myself.
Now, years later, I’m here. I’m so much more open and bright. Finding a balance between night and day. I had to be courageous enough to put out a book. Put together a book tour for my art I had to get more confidence in. I had to live by myself. Love myself. And to be clear, these are all things I’m still learning to do. I’m not a master at it. Yet as I look toward my future, I’m much happier with who I am and who I’m becoming.
I took a chance on myself.