Don't get discouraged

All my life I’ve felt inferior to others. From my earliest memories of school I can distinctly remember feeling this way. I wasn’t like everyone else. I was different. I was a short little skinny kid. School was a struggle for me and I had to work twice as hard to excel, and at times that still wasn’t good enough. I remember crying because I just couldn’t figure out what was being taught… and this only compounded as I progressed through school.

 I watched as my friends grew taller and taller while I stayed the same. I couldn’t wait until I hit my growth spurt. Then enter high school and I’m still the same height. To my dismay I never hit a major growth spurt, and I’m still penalized by that to this day.

So now I’m graduated and going off to college. “WOW” me attending college. As much as I struggled through school you’d think I’d quit. I chuckle at that. I can vividly remember my dad telling me “son, you’re not a quitter. You don’t start something that you don’t intend to finish.” I can remember him saying that clear as day, and I can honestly say that I’ve lived by that to this day.  I’ve never quit something I started. Take college for example. I failed some classes which put me behind in graduating on time.  So you know what I did? I retook those classes I failed and walked up that aisle and got my degree the following semester. 

Talk about discouraging. Thoughts of my childhood still haunt me to this day. “You’re not smart enough”, “You’re not good enough”, “Just go ahead and quit”, “You’re never going to win”, “Give up.” Those are some pretty negative thoughts, right? They don’t get any better from here. I’ve been a single guy for…well; pretty much my entire adult life and those thoughts of self-image plague my mind. I don’t see myself as attractive. I don’t see myself as someone a woman would ever be attracted to. "You're too short”, “You’re not attractive”, “What’s there to like about you?” “You’re nothing.” It’s hard to believe how much those thoughts affect you. It’s just like repetition. If you keep doing it you’ll get better, and on the flip side, if you keep saying it you’ll start to believe it.

I wish I was taller. I wish I had that natural attractiveness, but you know what? I don’t. And even if I could make those wishes come true, would I truly be happy? I know one thing, I wouldn’t be me if I could.  

So this leads me into something that you don’t hear much about (or at least, I don’t), which is dating from a guy’s eyes. I’ll just say that I could be totally off-base here, so this is just my perspective. It’s a mind game through and through. “Does she like me? Should I ask her out? What if I ask her out and she says no? How do I ask her out? Does she think I’m attractive?” And, you get the point. For me, asking a girl out is tremendously difficult, maybe because of lack of effort, but I have the mindset that I’m too short and there’s no way she’s ever going to say “yes” to a short guy. This isn’t just something I conjured up, I’ve been told it before and I’ve see ALL the polls and blog posts of how short guys are just sol. And it’s discouraging. Again, I could be totally off-base here, but I’m sure you single girls have some of the same thoughts. “Does he like me? Is he attracted to me? Does he think I’m pretty? Am I enough?” Luckily, you don’t have to deal with the “am I too short?” scenario…unless you’re super tall and taller than most guys, maybe then you have a similar thought. So yea, I have so much more I could build on, but I’ll leave it at that. Guys have it just as hard too. We what you to like us. To appreciate us. We try just as hard as you to be all that you want.

Moral is, don't get discouraged. Hang in here :)