Confident Insecurity is a Lie

She walks through the restaurant with her head held high. You know the kind of woman I am talking about. She’s got perfect boobs, held well in place by a perfect fitting top and (but it might be the ever envied OR) an expensive bra. She’s careful in the way she walks, smiling and nodding as she passes those who glance (and sometime gawk) her way. She’s neither thin nor thin, but the women look at her and want to have her body; the men want her body, but in a different way.

She’s the woman to gets to the bathroom and has to quickly lock herself in a stall to hide the tears welling in her perfectly outlined eyes. She could feel every eye on her as she walked. She tried to seem nice, inviting, kind, but wasn’t sure if she came off as snobbish or arrogant. Secretly she hopes she came across as sexy, not the awkward, nervous child she feels like inside. And that one thought, about caring how her physical body is received, makes her sick-to-her-stomach angry with herself.

And the cycle continues. It continues when she plasters that 100 watt smile on her face as she leaves the bathroom once again and catches the eyes of those following her across the floor. It continues when she criticizes her thighs as she sits down. It continues as she allows just another man to run his hand dangerously close to allowing her body to betray her.

She hasn’t always just felt like something to be used. She hasn’t always felt like something to be criticized or praised. At one point, she was full of fuck-yous and confidence. She had wanted to be something different; the role model she never had. But some where between her third drink and twentieth rejection she found something. She found that confident insecurity and a well-timed laugh got her further. It got her the attention she’d always missed growing up. It got her friends and people around her. It got her plans on Thursday nights and Sunday morning hangover breakfasts.

Sex came naturally to her. It was a language she could speak without uncomfortable glances or misunderstanding. It was a simple act that didn’t require her to think and, if she tried hard enough, she didn’t have to feel it either. It was just an act; it simply became an action.

But one day, as she sat fighting back years of tears, sitting cross-legged in the middle of her patchwork quilt with the same song on repeat, she realized that by treating the use of her body as an action, she had become nothing but an object.

With this realization, she finally grew. She outgrew her self-loathing and her self-criticism. She outgrew needing to feel accepted. She outgrew the need to be anything but who she was; who she is.

She is a beautifully complicated, old soul. She is rare and gorgeous in ways unexplainable. She is that person who leaves others feeling better about themselves, not jealous. She’s the person you gravitate to without know why. She the sad, beautiful tears that hold both loss and joy in one drop. She is a flower both bloomed and blooming; sunset and sunrise; both the brink and break of a storm.

She… Is… More…