When I describe myself I say things like: introvert, quiet, hate meeting new people, feel intimidated with people who are prettier, richer, more educated than myself. I’m more comfortable with men than women. Women scare me. I use to say Women are more catty. Men are more honest and simple. All these things describe an insecure person. How did I become this insecure person?

When I was five, I thought I was the Fonz. I would run and then slide on my knees going Ayyyy with my thumbs up. I behaved just like the Fonz. I remember looking in the mirror one day and feeling great disappointment because I did not look like the Fonz. His persona is who I related to. I felt he was most like me. I thought about this for a while asking God, 1. Why did this memory come back to me and 2. How did I go from thinking I was the Fonz to who I am now.

I thought about what the Fonz persona is. He has a solution for every problem. He is tough, but can be vulnerable. He is confident in who he is most of the time. He is different than everyone else around him, but is very okay with that. He is charismatic. He loves good and hates evil. Mostly though he is very, very confident in himself. He is cool and in control.

How did I go from taking on this persona of cool and in control to mostly feeling out of control and insecure. It can’t be blamed on my mother leaving because that happened before the feeling of being the Fonz.

While thinking on this, I remember the VeggieTales show about some town with little creatures who carried backpacks. They drew pictures of how they saw each other and put them in the other person’s backpack. They were suppose to fly, but the negative pictures weighed them down. I saw my backpack full of negative pictures that people had drawn of me and I had taken on the lies as truth.

The most recent one was the word dishonorable. It was not true. The person said it without having all the information. They said it twice. You are dishonorable. Even now I feel the weight of it and the total injustice of it. Then I start to doubt and wonder if maybe I am dishonorable. This has been a heavy weight.

As a child, I did not feel welcomed in any house I lived in. I was the youngest in a house of strangers. If I displayed any vulnerability, it was seen as a sign of weakness and attacked. I felt like a burden for my mother when I left my father to go live with her. I was ten. My father even said he was glad I moved out of his house so he could leave his current situation without worrying what to do with me. I love my father and mother and anything I say is all in the past, but these things added to my outlook of myself.

I don’t really know who I am. I want to. I want to see myself as God sees me as God created me to be. I want to be quiet and confident. I want to be who I really am before it was squashed by people who also had their natural personas squashed when they were growing up. Squashed, stomped on people will squash, stomp on other people. As I say that, I think of those whom I have squashed. I hope they forgive me.

I forgive all those who have drawn negative pictures and stuck them in my backpack. As I forgive, I see the pictures fall to the ground and dissolve into nothing.

I am the Fonz.

If you want to watch Veggietales Snoodles(fast forward through the first show about twenty minutes in): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R9-Padu7Lw