Borrowed Confidence

My reflection on putting down the confidence I borrowed and learning to belong as myself.

When I was younger, I needed a crutch.

No, I didn’t break my leg.

It started when I was eighteen. I’d started dating someone older than me, and most of my friends had gone off to college while I remained a hometown girl.

He would take me to these very large parties where I didn’t know a soul, yet everyone else seemed to have come out of the womb together. They’d known each other their entire lives.

I never knew what to say at those things.

I did, however, find myself a friend.

Twisted Tea.

I’d drink a few and suddenly I didn’t care so much about knowing what to say. In fact, sometimes I probably needed to care a little more.

I could loosen up. I could talk to anyone. I could do things I never would have done without a Twisted Tea in my hand.

A few years later, that relationship ended. It was hard on me.

Guess who was there again?

Twisted Tea.

I’d have a few drinks and suddenly whatever was hurting me didn’t seem to hurt quite as much.

Then I met my now-husband during the pandemic. There wasn’t exactly a whole lot to do, so for the first few years of our relationship, we spent plenty of evenings sitting around drinking Twisted Tea.

How did I get to know most of his family?

You guessed it.

Under the guidance of good old Twisted Tea.

They got to know me as bubbly, light and fun.

And I was those things.

But I’m not sure I realized yet how much I relied on alcohol to make those parts of myself easier to access—or how many other parts of myself I was muting in the process.

Then I became pregnant.

The drinking came to a hard stop.

I gave birth to my son and still didn’t really drink. Then I became sick, and eventually I decided that, for the sake of my health, I wasn’t going to drink anymore. The medications I was taking were already hard enough on my body. I didn’t want to add anything else to the mix.

So I stopped.

The problem?

I’d built much of my social life around a few drinks.

I had already changed tremendously through becoming a mother and becoming sick. Both have a way of rearranging your priorities, your perspective and your tolerance for things you once barely noticed.

But on top of all of that, I’d lost my crutch.

And I have to say, it was rough.

Sometimes it felt like I didn’t remember how to have a conversation.

I had spent years walking into social situations knowing that eventually I’d have a drink, loosen up and stop thinking so much.

Now I had to walk into the room as myself.

Completely sober.

Completely aware.

And everyone else still drank.

That wasn’t a problem because I thought drinking was wrong. I didn’t then, and I don’t now.

The problem was that I wasn’t on the same level anymore.

I wasn’t buzzed.

And without that buzz, I started noticing so much more.

I picked up on things people said that I might have previously laughed off. I dissected conversations. I took offence more easily.

Sometimes, if I’m being fair, I was probably reading too much into things.

Other times, something really was offensive or passive-aggressive.

Part of getting to know myself without alcohol was learning the difference.

Was something actually wrong, or was I uncomfortable?

Was I setting a boundary, or was I overreacting?

Was I being too sensitive, or had I spent years teaching myself to laugh at things that actually hurt?

I didn’t always know.

It took me a long time to get to know myself again after alcohol—to really become comfortable with who I was in my own skin.

I had to relearn how to converse without liquid courage. I had to figure out what I was willing to tolerate and what I wasn’t. I had to learn when to react and when to let something go.

Most of all, I had to figure out who I was when I wasn’t trying so hard to be easy to like.

I did lose some of the relationships Twisted Tea helped form.

And that’s okay.

I don’t look back at that with animosity. I don’t think those relationships were necessarily fake, either.

But I do understand now that the girl who existed within some of them was, at least partially, a performance.

Maybe “facade” isn’t even the right word.

She was still me.

She was just me with borrowed confidence.

She was a version of me who could laugh things off more easily. Who could fit into spaces without questioning whether she actually felt comfortable there. Who didn’t always know what she liked or disliked because belonging felt more important than figuring it out.

So when I changed, it made sense that some things had to change with me.

That realization didn’t make it easy.

For a while, it was brutal on my self-esteem.

I felt like I was constantly on trial. I tried desperately to hang on to some relationships and keep fitting into spaces that no longer felt natural to me.

Because the alternative was terrifying.

Not fitting meant being willing to stand on my own for a while.

With a new baby, no less.

It meant accepting that some people might not understand the person I was becoming.

It meant starting over and building relationships based on who I actually was underneath all of it.

And for a while, I felt deeply rejected.

It hurt when I started showing up as what felt like my most authentic self and seemed to get pushed further aside sometimes.

I wondered if some simply didn’t like the version of me who wasn’t always easygoing and light.

And, if I’m being truthful, for a while I didn’t know if I liked her either.

She was more complicated.

More sensitive.

More opinionated.

She had boundaries.

She noticed things.

She didn’t always want to go.

She didn’t always laugh.

She wasn’t particularly interested in being the easiest person in the room anymore.

But slowly, something shifted.

Instead of trying to get rid of those parts of myself, I started trying to understand them.

I started addressing some of the reasons I had needed that crutch in the first place.

And eventually, I gave myself permission to simply not be liked by everyone.

I became more comfortable saying:

This is me.

These are the things I like to do.

These are the things I don’t.

These are the ways I want to be treated.

These are the ways I want to treat other people.

And if all of that means I don’t fit everywhere anymore, maybe I’m not supposed to.

Being sober hasn’t always brought me the fun whirlwind my early twenties did.

Sometimes I miss how easy everything felt back then.

But sobriety has given me something I didn’t have at eighteen.

A better relationship with myself.

The girl walking into those parties all those years ago thought she needed something in her hand to make herself interesting enough, funny enough or confident enough to belong.

I understand her now.

She wasn’t fake.

She was borrowing confidence until she learned how to build her own.

And I think that’s what this chapter of my life has really been about.

Not learning how to fit back into all the places I once belonged.

Learning to become comfortable enough with myself that I no longer need to.

I’m coming up on the last year of my twenties in a few months. I feel pretty good about heading into my thirties knowing that when I walk into a room now, what you see is what you get. I’m no longer borrowing confidence or trying to become easier to like.

And maybe more importantly, I’m only walking into rooms where I know I’m exactly where I want to be.