Our Humblest Darling
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In an era that rewards performative humbleness, I want to embrace within me my radical self-confidence. One blink, and I recall all the decades I spent cutting off my fingers so someone else could eat. Because nobody had ever told me there was more to me than my fingers. Nobody had told me there were other things to eat on the table. Be small, be still. Value yourself less than you were worth. Be their humblest darling.
It was not, they promised me, a self-abandonment. It was the least I could do. Worth was measured with usefulness and I was as useful as a fork to a soup. Be small, be still. Confidence was arrogance, and arrogance was evil. The kind-hearted ones never spoke like they were above the others. The purest ones never said no.
When realization came, it did not come to me softly. It came swinging at my head with a spiked bat. Why did you give away your fingers? it asked. Why did you give them your tongue, your ears?
On the stage where I have to play the role of humility, I want to set a foundation of worth so steady nobody else can shake me. I set the bar, I set the price, I announce myself impure. I know my worth because I know myself. Healthy competition is my playground, not a secret shame. I am smarter, quicker, funnier. I am better because I push myself harder. And they, who took advantage of my lack of self-worth, were always meant to be irrelevant.
Take this coat off. Leave the backrooms. Humbleness is a coward’s narcissism. And me, I am no coward.
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