I Believe In You
By Gaby Dunn
If you don’t like cheese, kindly step to the left because it’s about to get Domino’s pizza up in here.
Hey.
I believe in you.
Maybe you think no one does. Maybe you’ve been a disappointment so long you don’t even remember what it was like to look up and see a light ahead, indicating a future full of love, happiness and goals. It’s a never-ending spiral — you made a mistake, people stopped believing in you, and then you resigned yourself to being a perpetual mess and stopped trying. You think no one believes in you or that you don’t need someone to step up to the plate for you because you reject them before they can reject you. You don’t need them, you think, but it’s a reaction to feeling unneeded by others. You brush it off, laugh at the platitudes, steel yourself against anyone trying to breach the gates.
Everybody needs someone else to believe in them. You think you don’t because you’ve been hurt before, because you left yourself open to wounding when you asked someone to believe in you. So you stopped and built a wall. You decided you needed no one. But it still hurts, doesn’t it?
You’re not happy. There are things you want that you don’t pursue. You’d rather come up with excuses, or sabotage, or not try at all than try and fail, than to prove right what you think everyone believes about you and so what you believe about yourself. God forbid, you go out on another limb to move forward in life and it backfires. You don’t think you’d be able to take it. It would only solidify what you think you already know about yourself: that you are worthless and nothing, that you’ll never be the person you want to be.
You’re wrong. You’re so, so wrong. Whatever it is you want, you should go for it. You can do it. You’ll face pitfalls and rejection, but I have no doubt you can accomplish whatever it is. Maybe you’ll take some detours, but that’s just life. That’s what everyone has to do. Nothing is ever set in stone, as they say. Don’t make excuses based on age or income or gender. Don’t place limits on yourself and then wallow in self-pity for things that are out of your control. Focus on what you do have power over. Use that to reach your goals.
And if not me, some stranger on the Internet, how about you let someone in? Let that person who wants to love and believe in you break down your barriers. The comedian Mike Birbiglia describes “love” as when someone else recognizes that special part of you that, no matter how low your self-esteem, still desperately hopes is there. When someone else see that in you, you feel invincible. But you can also be let down. Don’t be afraid of letting someone believe in you. They must see something you don’t quite yet see.
Or believe in yourself. If you don’t think other people have faith in you, don’t let it convince you that you are nothing. Have immense faith in yourself. Don’t invent patterns where there aren’t any. Don’t lose hope that things can change at any moment. Don’t resign yourself because others haven’t believed in you or because you just haven’t found what is it you’re looking for. Especially if you’re young. It’s wasteful to start thinking like life is over before it’s even really begun.
So there’s some food for thought. And even if you don’t need it, I’ll tell you: Someone believes in you. I believe in you.