About Confidence.......

People always asked me why I never smiled on pictures. Was it intentional? Was there something I was hiding? Looking back at old photographs, I realized there was a time in my life where I was always smiling, with no shame or thought behind it whatsoever...and then I stopped.

It appears as if the smiles disappeared sometime around the 7th or 8th grade. I tried to think back and rack my brain to determine if there was some event that caused my smile to disappear.... But aside from my own insecurities I could not recall a time when someone or something occurred that made me doubt myself and lose confidence.

I smiled my way right up until high school, and then I spent the next 4 years of life with a smirk permanently affixed to my face. Although I had it all going for me, I just didn't feel like I was pretty enough or even good enough to draw any attention to my so-called flaws...so I continued to mask all emotions and have a permanent emoticon face in all of my pictures....

I was self-conscious about my body (or lack thereof), my teeth, and my hair.... I was the only person I knew who did not have a relaxer up until I finally broke down and got one in college after the humidity did a number on my pressed hair during the brutal Baton Rouge summer time weather....

I lost myself so much during that time... I tried to change my appearance, I tried to make my hair like everyone else, I cut layer after layer trying to make myself look more mainstream... I did it all to fit in and make myself feel like a part of the crowd. It didn't work. When you lack confidence, you attract the wrong crowd. You do things to make yourself feel valued, but in the end those things strip you down further.... It was a rough...

This pattern of negative thinking and self-doubt followed me all the way through law school...and partially after...

It was a struggle that I faced for many years, until one day I woke up and realized that nothing was wrong with me...not my face, not my smile, not my hair... I was perfectly fine exactly the way I was.

It all started two years ago. My ex and I had just broken up & I decided to make a change. I told my beautician that I wanted to do something different with my hair and that I did not want to get anymore relaxers... Now I can't completely attribute going natural to that great of a shift in my thinking but it definitely played a big part in it....

After that, things just went upward for me... I prayed more, I had more faith, I cared more about the way I carried myself & one day a friend of mine noticed the difference. She told me that for the first time ever during the course of our friendship she could look and me & feel the happiness. I didn't understand it at the time, and surprisingly enough another friend of mine made a similar comment about happiness showing from within... All this time I had been thinking that by masking my emotions no one could tell how I felt inside, when all that time my mask wasn't hiding anything. Everyone could see the pain, the doubt, the insecurities... they could read right though the smirk and did the predators try to come and feed off those negatives vibes I was giving off... because once I changed, everyone who had been around when I was down disappeared because they could not stand to be around me while things were on the up & up...

Now, don't get me wrong... I still have my days where I feel blah, or not all great but I do my best to push those thoughts out of my head and plaster a smile on my face.... People wonder why I take so many selfies....Not because I'm obsessed with the pictures or that I'm trying to make up for anything lacking... It really just feels good to be able to see myself smiling in a picture or look at a photo of myself and not see the pain behind my eyes & find every reason to insult myself by the way I look.

I still slip a signature smirk in every now and then, but for the most part I no longer feel ashamed to show my smile in a picture... Sometimes I have to remind myself. Smile Fallon. You have so many reasons too. Change is hard. I had to train myself to be happy, and grateful because I spent so many years feeling the exact opposite. I have no reason not to be confident. I regret it took this many years for me to realize it, but there is no use in regrets when I have so many opportunities to make it right.

Confidence is a tricky thing. I think we are all born with it until we or the world convinces us that we are not. I don't know what triggered mine to disappear, but I try not to dwell on the past. Being happy and realizing the course of your life is determined a lot of times by your attitude & outlook on life makes a world of difference. Things didn't start looking up in my life, until I started looking up... And so I will continue to smile.