I’ll often find myself looking around and noticing that the people around me belong, but I don’t.  There’s just a confidence about others that I don’t feel I have.  Or it’s that I feel that I’m faking my confidence, but everyone around me isn’t.

I think growing up in a Western-white world with mixed blood and dark skin has made me sensitive to such things.  I was raised as though I was a white Australian by my parents.  Every weekend there would be a barbeque at a friend’s place.  While us kids played backyard cricket or played in the pool, our parents would sit back, talk, and drink KB beer…occasionally offering us some Pub Squash to keep us hydrated.

I don’t even speak my parent’s native language.  Which makes it difficult when visiting family.  I often just end up sitting there smiling, not knowing what the current topic of discussion is.

Growing up I wanted to be white.  I actually wished that my skin colour were different.  Nearly everyone in my class at school was white.  But as I grew older, I learned to accept my skin colour, and that it wasn’t a barrier to anything.

However, as I grew even older, and more migrants started coming into Australia, I had to face another thing that was different about my appearance.  I have some Asian features.  These weren’t brought to my attention till later on in life.  Wait, I thought I was only dark skinned! Now I have to deal with this?!

Crazy times.

I tend to try not to notice what other people think, and the only time I do is when someone that knows me and that I respect tells me what they think or looks at me funny.

I have come to a realisation lately though.  Everyone, to an extent or at some point feels out of place.  We’re all the walking wounded, we all have our story’s.

If you feel like you’re faking your confidence (I don’t like that word, let’s say you’re “practicing your confidence), chances are every single person around you is doing the same.  It’s just, if you practice it frequently enough it will eventually become reality.