Glow by Lady E

There’s confidence that’s loud.  Confidence that you can spot right away in a crowded room. Confidence that screams even from miles away.  And then there’s quiet confidence.  Confidence that doesn’t need to perform.  It simply exists.  I have learned the first type of confidence through years of training in declamation and oration.  But the second type?  That came slowly.  Even now I’m still learning it.  Still trying to be comfortable in it.  Soft confidence is buying flowers for yourself. No occasion.  Just because you know you deserve flowers that day.  It’s being able to arrange those flowers however you want to when you get home. It’s buying that pretty notebook. And actually using it.  Not saving it for a special event.  Not waiting until something worthy happens to be written.  Or finally using the pretty stickers with the confidence that more will come… It’s reading alone in a cafe.  And being comple...

  S ome days, I feel like I disappear a little. Not physically.

  I don’t remember exactly when it happened. There wasn’t a moment. No decision I sat down and made. It just… slipped away. The need to explain. It used to come so naturally. Filling in the gaps. Clarifying what I meant. Making sure I wasn’t misunderstood. I kept doing this over and over.  Second guessing. Checking that what I said didn’t translate the wrong way with the other person.  Not because I was unsure of myself. But because I thought that’s what you do when you care about being understood. So I would explain. Gently. Patiently. Sometimes even before I was asked. Just to make things easier. But somewhere along the way… I noticed something. The people who really wanted to understand me… never needed that much explaining. And the ones who didn’t? No amount of explaining ever seemed to reach them. Or they just didn’t care.  So I started pausing. Not intentionally at first. Just… noticing the space between what I felt and what I was about to say. And s...