Self-Esteem Wars: The Parable of the Prom Queen

No one can make you feel about yourself something that you do no already feel. That being said, there is this kid I know that "makes" me feel small. It is obviously a tendency I have anyway but for some reason, every time I come away from interaction with him, I feel stupid. I am not stupid...but I do not know everything. There are some things I am interested in...and there are some I am not that perhaps, I should become interested in (to expand my mind and all such nonsense). But the point is that I feel like an insecure high schooler again. Insecurity is no longer a great part of my identity, but it lingers in the shadows and claims hold on me when failures occur (as they do to everyone), or when wonderfully handsome young men don't express their undying love on first sight of me. Speaking of high school, I now present...
The Parable of the Prom Queen
There once was a wonderful young girl who didn't know it. She was actively engaged in music and sports in her high school and so became acquaintances, if not friends, with many people she came in contact with. She was fairly insecure so fairly unpretentious and thus open to conversation and interaction with most people in the varying casts of the social hierarchy known as high school. She enjoyed her pursuits and succeeded to an acceptable or more degree in a lot of them. Due to her varying activities she had different circles, enjoying and feeling cared about in some of the more remote as opposed to some of the more near. She was not extraordinary but hardly inconsequential. And yet, due in part to her gender (known for insecurity) and her age (infamous for insecurity) and to some degree, her peers, she at times thought very little of herself. Some things, which looking on with hindsight are only funny and great stories to for future generations, furthered her doubt in herself and they included among other things, the necessity for finding her own prom date. Silly as that event is to many at a more advanced age, to a teenager, the prom held too much weight. As a senior, the circumstances requiring finding a date were these: no other "appropriate" date had presented himself, and her name had appeared on the royalty ballot, requiring her attendance. So she found her own date and went to her prom. And what to her surprise, when she left with a crown on her head. Oh the irony of finding her own date and at times feeling friendless and small and then having the school crown her prom queen. Where did they get off? It meant very little to her because she was not convinced and thus forms the basis of our parable. The opinions of others matter very little when ones opinion of self is also very little. Others may think high or they may think low but think themselves blue, it avails nothing when the only opinion that matters is that of number one.
Back to the one who makes me feel small at present. I think through scenarios sometimes of how, when confronted with just the right situation, just the right words will come out of my mouth with just the right musical score playing in the background and I thought of these words; "I am a lot of things. But when I am with you, I become only those things that I am not. So I am done trying to prove myself to you. I am to busy proving myself to me." I thought of another someone who would have me focus on my lack and his name is Satan. I continued in the thought and realized that rounding out the trio of those who see only negative in who I am, was me.
Continuing, I think of this high schooler lying 7 years below the surface and realize that I am still the one who's opinion of me matters. The truth of the matter is that debate club captain, athletic star, or band geek, the spectrum of high schoolers likely all missed an opportunity that year to decide that, though their peers placed a crown on the head of another, the most important crown to place would be that of self confidence and the only hands to do the job would be their own. Hopefully, they have all taken the opportunity to do so for themselves since. And so I now "publicly" do the same. From this point forward, I denounce the identity of the awkwardly tall, insecure teenager, who felt stupid for finding her own date, and embrace the prom queen.