Four years ago, I was in the midst of the move of a lifetime to Singapore, a tiny island in humid, buggy Southeast Asia, and despite the cloying heat and the countless tiny geckos squiggling over the walls, I was most worried about being accepted into my new school. Whenever my parents asked me if I was excited to make new friends, I smiled and nodded my head – but in truth, I was beyond terrified. I would have moments of blind panic in which I questioned everything about myself. No doubt people would think I was weird… Would they? Or would they think I, an introvert and book-lover at heart, was just strange and overly-shy? I didn’t know, and not knowing really got to me. All through elementary and early middle school, I had lived with a constant unease that the other, more “popular” girls didn’t approve, and I didn’t want that unease to follow me all the way to Singapore. I wanted to be accepted, to make friends, and for people to care about who I was and what I had to say.
It was simple; to get past my worries of people not accepting me, I would have to push my nervousness and shyness aside. I would have to follow this advice: “fake it until you make it.” Learning how to constantly project confidence and healthy self-esteem is a life skill that everyone learns at some point. To be clear, faking it till you make it isn’t about being someone you’re not. It’s about pushing aside your fears, whether these fears are not being accepted by a new group of people or a new employer, or even just getting a little embarrassed.
But, learning to find confidence in myself when I felt like I didn’t have any was a scary prospect. When the first day of school finally came, I boarded the bus with my nine-year-old sister and tried (for the two hundredth time) to convince myself not to worry. My hands shook as the huge, horrendously yellow bus pulled into the expansive campus and began dropping the little kids off. Somehow, I gathered the courage to unglue myself from the seat and move forward. I walked into the huge campus on the northern edge of the island – somehow, my feet took me to where I was supposed to go. Homeroom was in Mrs. Zhang’s Chinese classroom on the third floor, and if it was possible, I felt even more foreign than any of the Chinese characters plastered on the walls. I sat down at a desk in the middle of a group of kids all chattering away about their summers. Surprisingly, they all seemed to be genuinely curious about me. I took a deep breath, swallowed my nervousness, and said, “Hi, I’m Abby!” …and that was it. I got talking with the girl I sat next to (her name was Sylvia), and by the time the week was over, we were good friends.
Three years went by in a flash. I met a seemingly endless stream of new people. I learned how to travel alone, tasted raw fish, explored a large portion of Vietnam, broke my heart, learned a new language, developed a new style that I could truly call my own, and walked straight into some of the world’s worst poverty (on purpose). I, incredulously, watched myself evolve into someone I was proud of – not only for the things I had done or the places I had seen, but also for the new, worldly perspective I had discovered. I still can hardly believe what has happened in such a small fraction of my life, and based on what I’ve experienced already, I know that it can only get better from here.
Incidentally, a new home after three years in an exotic place was, in my mind, nothing for me to worry about. When I moved last year to my current home in Exeter, New Hampshire, I told myself: if I had been able to do it before, then I could definitely do it again. I am someone who looks forward to the future in eager anticipation of what could be, not what could go wrong or how people won’t like or accept me. After all I had been through, I knew I would be okay.
In essence, I didn’t fake it until I made it. I faked it until I became it.