confidence

My driving lesson went pretty awful. Apparently I'm "lacking in confidence" - story of my life really!

I've never really had that much confidence in anything I do. Sometimes it can be easy to fake confidence - if a guy flirts with me in a club I can flirt back pretty easily (usually after a few drinks though), I can dance and kiss and feel attractive. But at the same time, I don't feel like it's me that they're attracted to. I can feel good about my looks when I've done my hair and make up and I'm wearing nice clothes, but when I'm back to being the awkward girl with glasses and jeans and messy hair, I'm not the kind of girl that stands out.

Throughout my time at school, not a single boy fancied me until my final year. Of course I wasn't the only one, but when you're a kid you think you are. Everyone else flirts, everyone else has boyfriends, except me. I had my first boyfriend when I was thirteen, almost fourteen, which isn't even particularly old. It's not the kind of age where, if I told people now, they'd be shocked at how old I was. But from the age of eleven (when I started high school) til thirteen it was the bane of my existance. I actually remember making up a holiday romance story when I was twelve; when we got back to school at the beginning of term I drew "I heart Kyle" all over my homework diary. Not that I think anyone believed it. I remember when I was thirteen hearing a "friend" of mine say behind my back once after an argument, "You know, I don't think she's ever even had a boyfriend before." Once before science class the girls were talking about which boys they'd kissed, and I had to walk away before I had the embarrassment of the question being asked to me.

My boyfriend at thirteen was one of those typical ridiculous relationships you have at that age - my best friend was going out with his best friend, and we'd go round to his house and dare the other couple to kiss. My first kiss was in my boyfriend's bathroom after being dared to by our friends, how very romantic! He bought me a bracelet for Valentines Day which I think may have come from a 20p machine, and we broke up after a month - I think he got his mate to dump me over the phone. But he wasn't a boy from my school, so I never saw him again.

The only other boyfriend I had while I was at school was when I was fifteen to sixteen. This boy was a whole other story which I'm sure I'll divulge at some point, but again, he went to a different school. So throughout my seven years at school, not a single boy asked me out.

When I was in year 13, I used to hang out with a boy in the common room during free periods. We'd just listen to my mp3 player mostly, and although I wasn't attracted to him he was a funny guy, and pretty well liked within the year at school. I still remember my amazement perfectly when a mutual friend told me he liked me. A while later he was at a party, and although I wasn't there (I was never invited to these things), I was told afterwards that he'd drunkenly announced to the whole room, "I'M GOING TO CALL KATIE!" To this day I still can't believe he would actually admit to liking me, after how I was seen by the rest of the year. That's always stuck with me, and even now I still feel that same shock whenever a boy admits to liking me. Which is pretty much my biggest downfall in relationships - I can never quite believe that they really want to be with me. I can put up a flirty front for a short while, but in the end the insecurity seeps through and destroys everything.