Insecure

Can insecurities ever leave us? What does it mean to grow up and be wise?

Young people are insecure, they're constantly afraid that they are not liked enough, that they will never be appreciated for what they are. But then we grow up and (at least in theory) we get more used to ourselves, we like us, we think we're cool, we don't rely on others to tell us what we're worth.

But there are always these people that make our knees shake, these people whose opinion of us is so important. Funnily and interestingly enough, these people are often part of our families, the one place where love should be taken for granted.

Usually it is mothers, overcritical ones especially, that do the trick: you can be cool, happy about yourself, self-accepting etc and then the overcritical mother comes along and destroys every inch of self-confidence you have painfully built over the years.

Some other times it is siblings and your complex relationship with them. I have no siblings, but from what I hear they can be a pain, too :-)

And then there are fathers. Being a Greek female only child, my relationship with my father is complex. I love him and all, but I am not so sure that I love him love him. I love him because I have to, but our relationship ranges from polite indifference to profound lack of understanding, to deep affection. To put it bluntly, I usually think that he does not understand me at all. He does not know where I am coming from, he does not understand my choices, he'd rather I was a bit more normal and like other girls my age. But there are also some times, very few, I can think of three in my life, that we talk and I recognize something in his voice, something that tells me that this guy is not just this polite guy my mum is married to. Something that tells me that he is my dad.