Regarding myself

I have a weird relationship with myself. One day I think I’m just super awesome, kick-butt, amazing, and that I deserve all the best in life. The next day I’m certain that no one likes me, I’m terrible, and I’ll never do anything right. I guess we all have our up days and our down days, but I think I get like this because I just can’t seem to figure myself out. I’m not always sure what I want, and I’m not always sure I’m doing the right things to get what I want. This is never clearer when I think about what I want in a potential partner and how to go about getting into the dating world. I know you were in class that day I was talking with Brandyn and Trent about online dating and how they met their wives. I’ve been seriously considering online dating for awhile now (PS this post has nothing to do with teaching, obviously). My two best friends have been encouraging me to do this. They’ve even gone so far as to offer to buy me a month’s subscription to Match.com or some such website, as a Christmas present, to encourage me to do this. So this has been a topic of discussion. At one point, I was talking about how I was worried I would never find someone who was good enough for me, who would get me, who would be able to put up with how strange I am (and appreciate my weirdness). Then another day I was lamenting the fact that I didn’t really deserve anybody and there was no one I was good enough for. My friend Monica threw up her hands and exasperatedly sighed, “Make up your mind, woman! One day there’s no one good enough for you and the next day you are awful and no one will want you!” She was bringing up a key point about me and my own self-regard: I just can’t seem to make up my mind about myself, and my confidence wavers from super over self-confidence to complete self-deprecation. I can’t seem to find a happy medium. I think this is because for a good portion of my life, my self-esteem was for shit, and as I’m getting older I’m finally feeling more confident in myself and coming to appreciate all the quirky awesome things that make me who I am – but sometimes I just revert back to that silly little girl who had no self-confidence. I’m working on it, and I think that at my core, I do regard myself highly – it’s just easy to slip back into that low self-confidence.