Confidence

 I'm going to start loading up some of my written material from between my dA and now! First up is "Confidence"!

Confidence

Confidence is fleeting. 

Tell me to stand in front of a crowd, and I will oblige. 

I will see my past, then, and the people outside of my mind looking in, and then the ridicule. 

The laughs, the stares, the persecution of what you see and what you think I ought to do will come to mind just as I begin to speak. 

With that, the confidence retreats, leaving a waste of unfinished sentences and fragments of phrases. 

Confidence, again, is fleeting. 

When you need it most, it’s never there. 

The conflict of speaking in the moment and speaking with refined thoughts and words is a barrier. 

A barrier, it seems, whose only purpose is to induce regret by inhibiting confidence. 

With that, sometimes confidence was not there at all. 

To believe in yourself and your work, your blood and your guts spilled onto the page, you then feel apprehension. 

I feel apprehension. 

I do not know how well I can speak these words. 

I do not know if I will stumble and falter. 

I know nothing, I cannot predict the future. 

I can watch the strands fall from the hair on my head as I rummage for some semblance of want and find nothing. 

I can read my stream of consciousness. I cannot defy what it continues to bring to me, like a broken tooth on a gear. 

It comes and goes, and it leaves a mark every time. 

To break another tooth is to fall further on toward insecurity, this fear of the past, this fear of myself and my own mind.