Entry: 14
Time: 4:30 p.m.
Date: April 27
- Location: Carrington, ND
- Temperature: 65 degrees
- Weather: It’s nice!! Partly cloudy
- Listening: a lot of Taylor Swift
- Watching: Upstairs Downstairs Season 1
- Reading: The Marrow Thieves
- Mood: a little worried but okay
- Drinking: Diet Coke
- Last Ate: Doritos
- Goals: prepare a lesson
- Lows: anxiety levels are high!
- Highs: the weather is very nice!!
Dear Diary,
I miss my clothes!!!! Have I talked about this before? Maybe I’ve mentioned it, but I want to talk a little more today about the face that I feel parts of my identity dwindling in quarantine, and one of those things is my confidence.
Let’s get this straight, diary, I’ve always been a very self-aware person, which has also made me pretty self conscious throughout most of my life. Even as a kid, I always was someone to think before speaking up about anything. Plenty of people called me quiet. A lot referred to me as shy. Thing is, I don’t think I’m that shy around people once I get to know them and feel more comfortable, but I am a careful person. I’m careful with my words, actions, and emotions.
That carefulness sometimes gets interpreted in different ways, and it takes time for me to make real friends. Now, in some professional settings, things are easier because there’s a more common script to most interactions. Furthermore, I’ve expanded a decent professional wardrobe in the past several years, and my sense of fashion has been able to blossom in my 20s. As a teen, I cared less about clothes because I was a high school athlete that just wore shorts, jeans, sweats, and t-shirts. When we dressed up for games, I occasionally put on a pair of heels, but I didn’t care as much about my clothes.
Why do clothes matter to me now? We’re in the middle of the apocalypse. I’m always at home. I can wear whatever I want to be comfortable. I like wearing leggings and sweatshirts.
But I also feel my confidence slipping a bit right now. There’s lots of reasons for this, especially as I continue to fill out job applications and wait and wait and wait to hear back for interview calls because so many schools have been set back because of the pandemic. And those interviews that would’ve been done in person are now happening digitally, which in some ways makes me more nervous because I can’t fully hype myself up with the process of getting ready physically.
And getting dressed helps me feel best about myself.
Plenty of my friends have joked that the way I present and carry myself can be intimidating—an overall air of self-actualization, confidence, and just having my shit together.
Truth is, I’ve needed to get very good at faking confidence in order to feel like I have any.
I can acknowledge the privilege it is to be missing a nice closet full of clothes during the middle of a pandemic when people are battling illness, losing work, and struggling financially. At the same time, I do need to get better at acknowledging my own emotions and why I’m feeling so rough right now. Those feelings shouldn’t be discounted—even though I’m capable of putting my life into perspective.
I mean, I’m reading The Marrow Thieves right now for Welcome to the Apocalypse, and the main characters need to scrounge for clothes and shoes that fit. When one of the youngest characters, a little girl named RiRi, finds a pair of discarded, shiny boots, she worries about how the previous owner lost them. Shoes are so rare for them that she thinks whoever left them behind must have been taken by the recruiters, who are capturing Indigenous people for their bone marrow. Narrator French needs to convince her that whoever left them must’ve been some rich little blonde girl so that she’ll take them.
RiRi only got a moment of hope from her pink rubber boots, and she was still thinking about others before she could wear them.
I guess I’ll have to reframe my own ideas and beliefs about confidence as I move forward in this pandemic. I KNOW I have other traits that are far more important. Sometimes looks are just the first thing people notice, so it’s another thing I’m super aware of. I’ll just have to concentrate on wowing interview panels with my intelligence, work ethic, and empathy (etc. but I’m not a braggy person!!! I have a need for humility!!)
Sigh. Settle down. Be comfortable in your own skin.
You’ll be reunited with your closet soon enough.
Who is that girl I see
Staring straight, back at me
Why is my reflection someone I don’t know
“Reflection” from Mulan
It was initially tougher to find Mulan COVID-19 references, but the GIF I found to begin this post is very dark, and the live action movie that was supposed to come out in March got postponed, so that’s sad. Guess I’ll wait for 2021 to defeat more Huns.
Until then, I’ll sign off for now.
Yours From Six Feet Away,
Noelle
Go the (Social) Distance 