Self-Consciousness

The other day when I was going to the grocery store, and walking in from the parking lot, I watched a pair of women, probably early-mid 20s loading their groceries into a mini van. One of them was loudly, badly, belting out one of the songs from Grease as she did so.

It struck me how she was just unabashedly enjoying herself, and having fun with her friend who was singing along, less loudly, but still participating. She didn't care that she wasn't a good singer, she was just doing it anyway.

Anyone who saw this week's episode of Glee probably saw the extra in the in the Teenage Dream performance who was standing next to Kurt and dancing exuberantly bad with swinging hands and fist bumps.



While I get that the latter is an actor in a show, doing a fiction, it still captures that sense of un-embarrassed simply having fun and not worrying about it. That kind of "Joie de vivre" it takes to enthusiastically dance or sing badly in public, not care what others think, and still have fun.


I am so not that kind of person. I wallow in my own self-consciousness. Maybe it's just part my intrinsic personality, and the fact that I'm a little on the weird side, who just can't follow the norms society expects of me, but I think in large part it was my childhood experiences. I was harassed, teased, mocked, and bullied in school for being weird, different, maybe just the smallest kid, or an easy target. It was a terrible experience, and after so many years of it, you develop the sort of walls you put up out of sheer self-preservation. You hide everything because when anything can be more fuel for the intense bullying fire, you don't want to give them any thing else to harass you about. Especially anything you don't feel particularly confident about. If you think your nose is too big, you certainly don't tell the bullies that so that they can wail on your sensitive areas.

The bullying got really bad for me. There was a point in 6th grade where I had 8th grade boys punching, shoving, kicking, tripping, and giving me threats of harm, up to and including death. Either they made it up to scare me, or someone started a rumor to get me targeted, they thought I was saying all sorts of mean things about their girlfriends and they were going to make me stop. But the thing is, when you aren't slandering some neanderthal's girlfriend, there's nothing you can do to stop it. I ended up having to be escorted from my middle school over to the elementary school where my mom worked every day by one of her friend's kids. A guy in my class, the type who is 6' at 12 already. And who was a pretty popular guy who had no desire to be seen in the same area code as me. So that was embarrassing. And scary, and terrifying. And of course the administration did nothing.

Public schools were I grew up sucked. The high schools are the kind of place with metal detectors and school buildings that look like castles with no windows. Where people carry sharpened pencils as weapons and poison teachers. Middle school was terrible enough. So I got out. I went to a private high school. Sometimes it was all my parents could do to afford to keep me in the school, but I went. It probably saved my life, either from myself or some neanderthal senior defending his girlfriend. But I'd spent K-8th grades being bullied, and it left marks. By the time I hit high school, I was utterly convinced that I was a worthless person that no one would ever want anything to do with. I didn't put myself out there, or start conversations because I just KNEW that everyone hated me and wouldn't want to talk to me. It took all 4 years of high school and some very amazing people to even begin to put a dent in that sort of persecution complex.

Maybe it might surprise people to know that beneath the veneer of the sharp-tongued little spit-fire there is so much self-consciousness and lack of self-worth... but some times the best defense is a good offense. Don't show any weakness. Keep everyone away so they can't hurt you.

I have come so far from the scared little kid that would get flung into the fence at school every day, or have people specifically aim balls at my head in P.E. (Nothing says paranoia and fear when you have every real reason to expect that a projectile will come flinging out of nowhere at your head, on a daily basis.) But I am still so self-conscious about everything. I wither from so much out of my own sense of shame, and my sense that if I talk to someone, I'm only going to annoy them. That if people know what I really think and feel, who I really am, that they will mock and harass me. That I will be teased and shunned, even as an adult.

I am still sometimes meek and guarded about things even with Josh. Out of a sense of avoiding embarrassment. I wish I had the self-confidence to sing along to a song when anyone could hear me. I find it fun, but I can only do it when I am alone. I've been with Josh for 6 damn years and I will still clam up out of mortification that he might hear me and I might be bad and he might hate it.

The sheer self-loathing does make me clam up and if I do make a sound, I'm sure it is bad because my throat is seizing with my self-consciousness. I think on my own, I'm not bad. I'm not a good singer, I don't always get the note, but I don't think anyone would slam their hands over their ears and run away. But I can't get over the horrible embarrassment to just simply enjoy myself. I don't think anyone ever expects singing along to the radio on a road trip to be a Broadway performance. If I ever do anything, it has to be done as a big horrible parody of "lol look how terrible I am, I dance so white" or "let me belt out a terrible note as a joke." Because if I am making fun of myself, I've beaten the bully to the punch.


I wish so much that I could be the kind of person to sing loudly and fearlessly in a parking lot and just let loose and have fun. Because when I saw that girl, I didn't think "What a terrible fool." I thought "Man she looks like she's having fun."