Growing up in my family, I had a constant reminder from my mother, who always told me and others how intelligent my elder brother is, and how our teachers who had the chance to teach us both always talked about both of us, comparing my brother to me, telling her what a fast learner he was, while I was a slow student who needed a constant and repeated tutoring before I could grasp a subject. I still hear the sound of that in my head as if it were yesterday. Because of this, I became afraid of not being enough, not smart enough, not intelligent enough, and it also made me feel timid at all times. I went in a secret competition with my brother, trying to do better than him at all times or sometimes trying to match the record he had set before me.
These fears will make me quite even when I have something reasonable to say in class or in a crowd of people; I will always second-guess myself, and in the end, keep silent. Occasionally, I seek approval from others, waiting for validation whenever I man up to do anything. It affected me so much that I find it difficult to do anything when a spectator or a large crowd is watching, and I had no self-confidence. Even when I will do well in class, I usually attributes it to some fault, for instance, one time my results improved in school, my father asked me how I was able to do better in school that term, my answer was that the students who were better than me in class, had left the school that term which made me have a better result for the term.
Funny how time has passed, and I’m not completely free from this fear, although I’m sure I've grown, embracing self-love, the feeling of being enough, and not waiting for people’s validation to live my life. I have a growing self-confidence and a sense of self-worth. Understanding what this fear has made me become and what it has made me lose, I have understood that loving myself more will give me more confidence and gain back control of my life, I grew to understood that in life, we can only compete with our past self, comparing what we were yesterday to how far we have come today, and improving our lives daily from the information we have gathered.
My name is 