Insecurities

“People make jokes ’cause they don’t understand me
They just don’t see my real side I act like shit don’t faze me, inside it drives me crazy
My insecurities could eat me alive” – Marshall Mathers

Those lyrics above are my favorite part of “Hailie’s Song”. The song is about how he feels about his daughter but I took that little snippet and applied it to my life because, honestly, I feel it deep down to my core. I have always struggled with insecurities and though I have gotten better with a lot of them, they still silently eat me up and they are still really difficult to navigate. 

See, the reason insecurities suck so much is because they, in a sense, are not anyone else’s fault. There are occasions where I can be sitting outside and enjoying a fun time with friends but a conversation that is occurring triggers some insecurities and I just have to smile through them. You don’t just up and tell someone “hey that thing you are talking about that makes you happy is making me sad because of some thoughts I, undeservedly and unfairly, projected on myself”. This past weekend made this topic come to my mind so I figured I could be vulnerable and write about what I feel. 

So let me set the scene… A group of friends went to eat for a birthday brunch and there were numerous attractive women around. As we sit at the table, breaking Covid free bread and laughing, the women start talking about guys. The convo naturally shifted to how many fine men one girl knew, and how the others were wondering where they were all at and how could they be invited. Meanwhile I was just listening and looking around the room like a nervous puppy who was in a kitchen it had no business being in. As I laughed at the jokes and ate the food, all the thoughts in my head were about how I was never thought of as the fine guy, or how the men these women be clamoring over look nothing like me. The hardest part of that was the fact that I know there are many women who think I am fine and think I am blah blah blah, but oftentimes insecurities can’t just turn off. I am much better in life now where they don’t debilitate me but I do want people to understand that some of these things take a LONG time to work through.

Looks aren’t the only thing that I have been insecure about lately and they are actually the least bothersome on the list when I think about it. I have been having more responsibility with my job and with my chapter. I mentioned how imposter syndrome was very real at work and so many of my peers said they never thought I would suffer from that because I always seem so confident and they think I am great at speaking to groups or publicly. The reality is so far from that that it makes me laugh thinking about it. As far as my job, I haven’t been able to write code consistently for a while so when I dove back into it to work on some new tasks I felt like such a bad developer. Some things I asked for help on were things I should have known. It took me longer to figure out solutions to things than in the past and I constantly feel like I am not handling the responsibilities well. This all made me think of how badly I performed in my major classes in college (the only F’s I ever got were in my major classes). I had no knowledge of programming until I got to college, and being one of the only black people in my classes, I was too scared and insecure to ask questions early on. I didn’t feel I belonged or was smart enough and these thoughts and feelings were triggered, making me feel the same way now. Though the feedback is not in line with my thinking, it still feels that way and I am constantly insecure about anything I have been submitting.

When it comes to my chapter, dealing with these insecure feelings is a constant struggle. I am the Vice Basileus (vice president) of my chapter and I constantly feel like I am not doing a good job. Whether it be because one particular person decided to tell me how bad of a job he thought I was doing, even though he was loud and wrong about the things he was angry and emotional about, or the fact that I never served in this position on this large of a scale, or even the fact that that a lot of what I do is invisible to the overall chapter, I never know if what I am doing is what I should be doing. I ask for feedback from the other leadership and they give me honest and mostly positive feedback but it doesn’t stop the insecurities I have. I wont lie, the one brother who tried to tear me down really bothered me for a while and it still makes me question what I am doing. I constantly tell myself I am doing a good job and I am doing my best but these insecurities, as Marshall stated, could eat me alive. It is a constant battle that I am just happy to be at least winning right now.

For anyone who deals with insecurities I hope you know that regardless of what they are, you aren’t crazy or weird for having them. I understand how hard it can be to talk about them because half the people who hear them will invalidate them under the guise of boosting your morale and the other half will probably give unwarranted advice like “well just don’t think like that”. If you sometimes hear or see someone say something that triggers an insecure thought then remember you are human. In this age of instantaneous information sharing, instant gratification, and public glorification of things you may not be, it’s easier to be constantly feel bad about y0urself. If you are a bald man and all you see are women salivating over a fresh cut and laughing at men who don’t have a hairline by age x, it can feel a way. If you are a petite woman yet all the men seem to be thirsting over huge booties and fake bodies, then it can make you feel a way. If you are a plus sized woman and all you see are a specific body type of” BBW” get praised and fetishized, it can make you feel like you are less than. If you don’t have the body of one of the 300 Spartans and all the women you know start asking you if your “fit” friends are single and ignoring you, it can make you feel a way. I just want to share these thoughts because I find it rare to actually talk to a lot of friends openly about things we are insecure about. As a black man this is not something I think is normalized enough. I wish it was because I believe that knowing you are not alone in these battles helps to make them a lot more manageable.