Let’s build people up. We never know where they may go. Contains: Talk of Anxiety, Talk of Self Worth, Comfort, Anxiety Aide I mean, I know where you are. I was there for a long time….Hell….sometimes I still get there, even after all this time. It’s just…..sometimes, you put everything you have into something, and when no one acknowledges the hard work that you’ve done, sometimes, you lose all confidence in yourself. Look at where I was before the Grand Prix. I was at the absolute bottom of my game, because I didn’t have any confidence in my ability. Ostensibly I knew that I was good, I wouldn’t have made it to those competitions in the first place, but….well….I guess I just needed someone to tell me that I was good. And, I know there are people who did for a long time….it’s just…I feel terrible for saying this….but I needed to hear it from someone who…mattered? God that sounds awful. I mean like…..*sighs* When Viktor came to me after that video went viral of me doing his routine, and he told me that he saw potential in me and wanted to be my coach, something in me just said…..”Finally. Finally someone who I don’t think is saying it just to make me feel better or are straight out lying to me. Someone actually thinks I’m worth it.” Not to say I actually thought this of my family and friends and other colleagues, you know? You know as well as I do what anxiety and stress and stuff can do to a person’s brain. It would tell me all the time that everyone was just humoring me, that I wasn’t really all that good and that they were just pitying me. I know now that it wasn’t the truth, but sometimes it’s hard to get that idea out of your head once it’s planted there. But, I wouldn’t recommend getting all of your strength from what those around you say, from the validation of your peers or other professionals, because that’ll just drive you insane. If you depend on that, every negative comment will be an arrow that just shoots you down, and you might not be able to get back up again because you’ll be wallowing in all of the negativity. There will always be people who hate you and people who don’t want you to succeed for absolutely no reason, and while criticism can help, flat out hate won’t. I know that you know all this already, but sometimes, you need to hear it from someone else, someone who isn’t tied up in your brain. God I’m bad at this. What all this rambling is, is like…. I didn’t have a lot of self-worth, but having Viktor, having someone that I looked up to tell me that I was good, that it wasn’t just people pitying me and that my insecurities were all in my head. Then, little by little, my self worth started to grow. I started to see that yes, all the hard work that I had put into this thing, that it was worth it, that I was good. My self confidence got a kick start because people believed in me, and the more my confidence in myself and my own abilities grew, the more I saw that more people truly believed in me than I thought. I thought that I had put everything I had into what I was doing, but with more confidence, I found that I could go further than I ever thought I could before. Then I realized that there were people who actually looked up to me. Me of all people! I think, what I’m trying to say is that, believing in yourself can be extremely difficult sometimes, but I think if we, as people, reach out, and try to nurture and grow the confidence of other people, we may end up better as….humans. We don’t know who looks up to us, and if we take the time to acknowledge the work of others, tell them that they’re worth it, and that they’re good…. that someone may blossom, and well…..become a better person, for themselves. We just need to be…more vocally kind I think. It doesn’t take much, just letting someone know that you like their work and what they do…..it could actually mean the world for them.