Here’s my Christmas prayer: that all of you may win a meaningful battle against your own personal demons.
My older brother reminded me of my own demon yesterday when, out of the blue, he told me how full of myself I was as a child. This is the first time I’ve heard this. In truth, it comes from a man who has struggled with a lifelong inferiority complex. And really, how well could he have known me? Fifteen years my elder, he spent at most a few weekends a year at home. So why allow myself to get irritated by what he says?
Because what he said was laughable, so laughable that it traveled beyond funny into The Land of Not Funny at All.
A lack of confidence has always been my demon, even from the very earliest of ages. In first grade I missed a week of class due to laryngitis, and when my Dad escorted me back to class I was so overcome by the fear that I could never catch up that I cried, right there in front of all my classmates, all their white eyes locked on my weepstorm. My Dad had to drive me home where, over the coming days, my parents worked on my confidence, reminding me how good I was, how smart, how successful.
I was in first grade, for chrissake! The only homework I had that year was a Thanksgiving assignment to decorate a two-dimensional turkey. And here was little me, creating a pitiful spectacle in front of all my friends.
Did I learn from this experience? Did I realize that I had nothing to fear, that I had the tools necessary to overcome adversity? No, because that’s the nature of true, honest for goodness demons: they can’t be wiped out; we must struggle with them our whole lives until we are buried, side by side, in the cooling ground.
No, the lack of confidence became bolder as the years passed. It’s why I skipped a voluntary math aptitude test my senior year in high school. Mrs. Ihrke, my calculus teacher, was pissed that one of her best students rode out a test that helped determine government funding of her program in the coming year. And boy, did she let me know it, right in front of the whole class. Sorry, Mrs. Ihrke. I was worried that I’d fall short, that my score wouldn’t live up and that everyone would know me as a failure. The lack of confidence is why I didn’t date until well into college. I could see no earthly reason why a girl would want to spend time with me and feared that just one rejection would stomp my fragile ego into fine dust. It’s why I was 25 before I drove a car regularly. I took for granted I’d bumble the experience and crash. (As it turned out I was right; I caused an accident two weeks after buying my first car, a shiny new Saturn SL-1.)
I’m 39 and I still struggle with my confidence. I’ve lived a full life, I’ve gathered a dragon’s hoard of wisdom, and yet even at my calmest, happiest moments I can hear fear and doubt muttering on my shoulders. At such times the voices sound so foreign and disembodied — i.e. like a demon — that it makes me laugh. The voices wait for my laughing to subside and begin talking once again.
Now, as demons go, a lack of confidence is not a bad one. If, before I made the great leap down to Earth, God made me choose a demon from among the many, all crouched and growling inside small pens, then I chose well. After all, the Lack of Confidence demon doesn’t compare with, say, Alcoholism or Clinical Depression on a scale of ferocity.
But this never stopped my Mom and Dad from boosting me up whenever I needed it. Even as I crept into my 30s and they unknowingly lived the last years of their lives, they made a point of reminding me how much I’d accomplished, how many gifts I had, what a good person I was. They were the only two people who fully understood the demon I fought, and who took up the sword and joined the fight. I never took the time to show my gratitude, so let me take this opportunity, in front of all you good folks and on this holiest of days, to say it once and for all: thanks, Mom and Dad.
