Confidence

On Friday I got on Skype with some of my oldest friends.
Women who have known me for almost 30 years.
Some whom I haven't seen in more than a decade.
One - my Karina - who is my constant, and who calls me daily from California.

Sometime before either of us was born, something big and powerful looked over all that was ahead for me in my life and said,

To make it a little easier throughout, I will give you your Karina. You will meet her early on and you will be close to each other forever. She will witness and love you unconditionally and reflect all you have been through and how you have blossomed. Your paths will move in parallel all of your lives.


(Karina and me, holding each other's babies, January 2004)

We met at the beginning of fifth grade, both of us a little different, born in other countries, weird foods packed in our lunches.
On the first day of school each year - even though I've been out of school for 16 years - I count the years and honor our anniversary.
This September was 28 years.
That's a long time.

She claims that it's equal, that I give to her as much as she gives to me.
That we just get each other in a way that only we, with our history, can get each other.
I honestly could not have gotten this far without Karina.

When Dave and I first started going out, there was something familiar about his nature.
Something about his positive outlook, his faith in life, his confidence, his comfort with people, his ease.
That familiarity reminded me of Karina, and I knew that I could do this journey with Dave as my partner.
Dave asked Karina what he should know about me, and she replied, Gal's neat.
What more could you ask from your lifelong friend?

I loved seeing them all together over the picture on the computer.
I wished I was there with them, these gorgeous women I knew as girls,
There with their gorgeous mothers who had been in their thirties when we were kids,
And their gorgeous children... Three generations of beauties.

All but two of these friends are from Russian families
And for all these years I have been held by Karina's family as if they were my own.
I don't speak Russian at all, but when Karina's mom talks to me,
I understand what she says by a sort of osmosis - feeling the emotion in the sing-song of her language.

Karina and I were talking on the phone today and she told me about a video she had watched with a few of these friends.
It was taken at our high school graduation.
She talked about how for the most part, most of us looked like younger versions of ourselves, but pretty much the same.
Maybe a little less grounded, a little more flighty, bubbly,
But pretty much the same.
Except me.

That's because I was carrying 50 extra pounds, I said.
But it was more than that, Karina pointed out.
And Karina knows me sometimes better than I know myself, so I listened.
She's right, it was more than that.
She spoke about confidence, and how she sees me hold that now, as an adult, as a woman.
She noticed that that confidence just wasn't there back in 1989 when I was a few days away from 18.
She's right, it wasn't.

Maybe it was that I was newly fat, and didn't feel at ease in my body.
Maybe it was that a few years before my parents had gotten divorced and my mom had quite suddenly left our home forever.
Maybe it was that I'd always been a head taller than my friends, who developed years later than I did - the contrast that made me feel large even before I actually was.
Maybe it was that I didn't have a boyfriend... and oh how I wanted a boyfriend in the way, I was convinced, everyone else had a boyfriend.

But then I went back to before high school, even to before my totally awkward and totally void-of-confidence, embarrassingly insecure junior high school years.
And I realized that I just wasn't incredibly confident for most of my life.

Don't get me wrong - about some individual things I was confident:
I knew I was smart and good at school and getting good grades.
I knew that, even if I didn't have stick-skinny legs at age 12, I did have a pretty face, a nice smile with naturally straight teeth, and big eyes with long eyelashes.
I knew that I had a nice voice and could sing on key.
I knew that I was mature and responsible, and a good babysitter, a kid adults trusted and enjoyed being with.
I knew that it was pretty cool that I'd already lived on three continents by the time I was seven, and spoke French... even if those experiences also contributed to what made me feel different.
I knew I was creative.

But that overarching confidence, that sense of ease in one's skin, ease in one's soul, comfort with one's self...
I just didn't find that until so many years later.
Maybe it's the nature of being younger than 25, no matter who you are... but I don't think so.
I didn't bother to take a poll about this at my 20th high school reunion last summer,
But I'm pretty convinced that some of the kids I grew up with who appeared to feel good about themselves in spite of braces and badly permed hair at age 15 really did feel that way.
How and why that is the case, I really have no idea.
How and why I lost whatever deeply-rooted confidence and trust I may have had as a very young child, I'm not really sure.

Maybe it was just part of my journey, part of what I needed to go through in order to get here,
To this place of grounded, trusting, grace-guided womanhood.

I said to Karina on the phone,
Oh how I would love to go back in time to myself at 17, give myself a hug and a glimmer of the confidence I have now.
She finished my sentence,
Let her see you now, so she knows she'll get through it, to all that is ahead. See the wonderful man you married, your beautiful daughter... And all the hard stuff ahead too.

After I got off the phone, I had a flash of myself in 1991 on the roof of my apartment building in Westwood, Los Angeles.
Sophomore year at UCLA, one of the most depressing years of my life.
I filled probably five journals that year with endless longing,
Passages about how low I felt, how alone, how trapped in a body that didn't feel like my own.
In that flash, I sat next to the jacuzzi, my feet dipped in the hot water,
Probably staring down at my thighs, lamenting how large they were
As I wrote in my journal, hoping no one would disturb me, comfortable in my sad loneliness.


(Pregnant with Dahlia at sunset on a beach in Patara, Turkey, August 2003)

I wonder what it would have been like that night on the roof if I had encountered myself,
Back in time from 18 years ahead.
If that Gal had said to me,

Hang tough. You'll lose the weight. You'll release this sadness. You'll find your joy. You'll have adventures, you'll play. You'll fall in love. You'll walk down the aisle. You'll have babies, some who will live, one you will lose but not completely. Things will be great. Things will be hard. But you'll grow and you'll strengthen and you'll work hard and you'll shine. And throughout you'll be held and loved and blessed by lifelong friends, family who know you deeply. Kindred spirits. Keep moving towards that, and I will see you there.

I think she would have given me great confidence, that Gal, if I had met her on that rooftop.


(Pregnant with Dahlia at the Burning Man Decompression Party, October 2003)

On Skype the other day, I felt it.
I felt I had arrived.
I felt grounded, confident, beautiful, me.
I felt it because in my beautiful friends, I could see it too.
And there is no way they could have grown into such amazing women
Without my having gotten here too.

Thank you ladies.
I love you.