A Certain Confidence

I’m tall.  At five foot eleven, I am informed, in fact, that I am really rather stupidly tall for a woman, and while it’s very handy for reaching high things on shelves, and getting to pesky plugs that are just out of easy grabbing reach, I do suspect that over the years, it’s actually dented my physical self-confidence.

This thought occurred to me during an escrima class.  I am taller than every other person in the room, and when actually practicing stuff, I have no qualms about charging in to do the moves, and feel reasonably confident that if someone comes at me with a pointy stick, I’ll probably get out of the way, one way or another.  It may not be elegant, it may not be pretty, but it will almost certainly happen and I’ll pretty much be in control.  Martial arts, they say, develop your confidence, but as I left the class I realised – my confidence is a multi-layered thing.  When I express myself using the written word, I feel extremely confident.  It’s the medium I know best, and the simple act of writing creates a natural rhythm which somehow seems to serve my self-expression perfectly.  I can hear sounds and tones and shapes in the written word that I struggle to express vocally, and pinpoint the heart of an argument in a single sentence which, if spoken out loud, might take me whole paragraphs to pin down.  Writing, the simple truth is, is where I am most myself.

Then there’s speaking, and sure, if I’m in the right state of mind, I can speak with perfect confidence.  Or at least, with apparent confidence.  As with all social interactions, how I speak depends on who I’m with, and it’s a simple truth that over the years my speaking voice has come to mirror my writing voice more and more, so now, whenever I have to handle difficult conversations or I’m feeling out of my depth, I almost write my words out in my mind before they actually pass my tongue, and thus maintain some semblance of sanity throughout the process.

Finally, there’s physical self-confidence, and this is where it gets tricky.  I’ve already said I’m tall, and by the age of 13 I was already five foot ten in a class of girls whose average height was maybe five foot four if we were lucky.  As a result, I slouched for most of my teenage years, and still slouch habitually now.  Aware that I was, basically, a gormless gawky looking thing, I shied away from making eye contact with people for years, until finally deciding, age 15, to train myself in the art of looking people in the eye by practicing meeting people’s stares on the Hammersmith and City Line, which, to anyone who hasn’t been on it, is a horrible line whose very name strikes a shudder into the deepest part of my soul.  By the time I was 18, I’d learned to walk with my head upright instead of pointing down, mostly because I’d also learned that by walking with my head up I got to see more of the city through which I moved, and it was easier to avoid walking into trees and other such unfortunate occurrences.  By the time I was 22 I’d overcome my fear of heights and had come to realise that, however much I shied away from strangers in a social environment, and cringed up inside and out at awkward encounters, my long arms and legs were really very useful for tricky rigging off ladders.  By 24 it’d been pointed out to me that I gesture hugely when I talk – especially when telling stories – and after a little consideration I concluded that, so long as there wasn’t anything valuable around at the time, this was probably okay.  Decorum, when you’re 90% elbow and knee, seems like a naive aspiration when there are so many other skills out there to be acquired, and only a limited time to do so.

And now?  Now I have the physical confidence to practice escrima once a week in the fairly happy thought that if someone was to come at me with a big stick and a cry of ‘banzai’ I’d have enough self-control to get out of the way.  But alas, self-control, it turns out, still isn’t physical self-confidence, and if asked to dance in a nightclub or, heaven forfend, adorn my body with anything that isn’t stained with paint or scarred with wire cuts, I’d be instantly reduced back to the overly-tall 13 year old standing in front of her entire class wondering why so many of them were having to strain their necks.  The desire to blend in is one of humanity’s strongest instincts, and is usually only conquered through a great deal of work.  There is, it seems, some truth to the cliche that those who are short, can sometimes overcompensate by being loud and brash, to grab the attention of others; while those of us who are tall, tend to shrink down and hide, and hope no one really notices.