Hello, it’s been a while since I’ve been here and I’m glad to be back!!
(And I promise you, you’ll be seeing me every Thursday now that my semester’s almost ending.)
During these months of relentless internals, college life and a lot of other things, I’ve been getting flashbacks. Memories of being bullied which was repressed within me suddenly came out overflowing with anxious situations I faced in my present life. As I’ve been building my self-confidence from scratch all these years, these past few weeks have really cemented the idea that came to my head as a tiny star, a little vision that erupted in my mind and has been becoming clearer and clearer with everything I do, every step I take.
Here, I argue: pride, and even arrogance, is transformative to a person who’s endured bullying in the past.
Pride—that emotion that people say with instantly lead to your downfall, that fleeting confidence—is often preached against. You should be humble, down to earth, on your knees in front of the world perhaps begging for your own life. You should never flatter yourself, never look into the mirror and pretend you’re a Miss World winner and you’re being crowned. God forbid, you should never tell people that you’re smart, intelligent, and proud of that fact. You must, and should, cover the aspects you’re proud of under the tight blanket of humility, of somber shyness, of modesty. Especially to a girl, a woman, modesty is virtue, humility is virtue.
But what of the bullied child? That child who has grown up with people around them telling them that they’re worth nothing? Whose touch people would flinch from? Whose loveliness no one could understand, underneath all those scars on their face? For that child, humility is self-scarring: it is the reiteration of all those words thrown at their face. The child looks into the mirror and instead of telling themself that they’re all that they desire to be they shut themselves in this spiral of self-deprecation cast as humility. Jokes like “I’m not a good ____” or that “I’m not _____” in reaction to people praising them can be perceived as humility, but it works like a reinforcer of all those times people trod upon them like dirt, recognized them as dirt. Even after years have passed since the stop of the bullying.
As a bullied child myself, I’m no stranger to this. Every time I would say “oh but I’m not so good”, my brain would immediately whirl back to all those times I’ve been told by others how I was a loser, my own friends telling me that they’ve been told by others “why are you talking to that loser?”. Voices—all fumbled, incidents mixed—would enter my brain until I would just fall asleep to escape. And with more memories unveiling themselves, the more fodder the fire gets. The more anxious and insecure I become. All the more, I become farther and farther away from self-confidence.
But then, I began hyping myself up. I started to express things like “I’m really smart” out aloud to people around me and with myself. I joined in when people talked about how cool I was, how knowledgeable I was, how beautiful I am. Funnily, I would say the word ‘slay’ to everyone, including myself. The self-talk I openly do, I started to express what people would perceive as arrogance: smiling into the mirror, constantly talking of my ideas, truly loving myself openly. My pride shines through the mouth, and I sometimes felt like I would become Narcissus and be punished for being this being of self-confidence.
Only that it transformed me instead. I started to focus less on my anxiety, and more on that fleeting happiness I would constantly change. Arrogance became this transformative being that brought in so much more confidence. Telling myself things like “you look pretty today” or “you were so damned good today” will be perceived as arrogance; but to me these words become helms of power. Wreaths of energy. That confidence coursing through my veins as I walk into rooms. My laughter as power when I talk about passion. It is transformative. It truly is.
So, I say it again: pride and arrogance as they are perceived, are transformative to the bullied child.
Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you soon. Lots of love, reader.
What I’ve Been Reading These Days
Ariadne by Jennifer Saint: I love retellings of mythology, and this was one of my favourites!! I was a bit iffy because most retellings just echo the format of ‘The Song of Achilles’ but this one was pretty different! The multiple points of view by Ariadne and Phaedra are splendidly written (you could actually sense a difference in tone!) so I absolutely devoured this book!
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer: I’ve been reading only the Prologue to this long, long poem and not gonna lie, I’m actually enjoying it!! Especially to analyse it piece by piece, the medieval physiognomy, the history, the ecclesiastical order, and just more English history to be very brief. I’m looking forward to reading more Middle English texts!!
my mom sometimes say that the key to being healthy is moderation, which i believe works with emotions as much as it might work with foods. pride or arrogance aren't the monsters we're taught to be in every context, and a persistence of humbleness like you mentioned, it can make a person become slightly submissive. modesty is only a virtue if you're not taken advantage of due to it
i'm glad to hear you've found a way to love yourself a little more