Despite all the forewarnings from older friends and family to focus on myself and not get caught up in what other people think of me because of how irrelevant it is in the grand scheme of things, I’ve had my fair share of insecurities related to other people’s opinions of me. I was painfully shy when I was younger, more of an observer from the sidelines. I had no interest in being the center of attention and preferred to watch the action rather than partake in it. It took a lot of encouragement to build up confidence but that’s not that hard to come by as an elementary school student where teachers are constantly trying to do just that. Flash forward to middle school when I thought I had discovered a real friend group. I was happy with being myself in front of them, but I then found out that a lot of what I thought was a true friendship was fake.
I didn’t realize the effects at first, but so much of the self-confidence I had finally developed slipped away. I became more self-conscious when people asked my opinion of anything and found myself questioning if any of my friends even liked me. There still definitely are times when I have doubts about whether or not my friends are being fully transparent with me, but I’ve also come to realize that it’s unreasonable to expect anyone to always accommodate my insecurities. I’ve learned to seek out friends who are willing to discuss any problems we face instead of pulling away to talk about them behind my back. But probably most importantly, I’m figuring out how to balance how much I care about what people may say about me versus what I think of myself. Of course I value the things my friends say, but I also take them with a grain of salt. The moment I tried completely letting go of my fears of what others might think of me and started doing the things that followed my own set of morals was the most freeing and relieving thing ever. This way, my friends could decide if they liked the real me and not some person trying to conform to them. I’ve learned to deal with my fear of people judging who I am by unapologetically being myself. I’ve lost some friends along the way, but it’s because of the ones that stuck by me that I’m happier now than I ever was before when I was trying to fit in.
Being attractive on the surface level isn’t a bad thing and can in fact be very appealing, but Cyrano teaches us that love is so much deeper than that. He doesn’t initially confess to Roxane because he thinks that he is “whom the plainest woman would despise” (47) since he has a large nose. He lets his insecurities get the best of him; however, genuine love is so much deeper than that. My current friends stay with me no matter what my grades are or how I look on any given day, and reading Cyrano just affirms that no matter how cheesy it may sound, it’s what’s inside that counts. What he teaches us about love is in the same vein as what we learn about courage. Bravado isn’t what real courage is. Being courageous means opening yourself and being vulnerable. All the times Cyrano takes on risky situations like fighting the men a hundred to one, he does it for an image. He rarely exposes the parts of him that makes him weak emotionally, telling the orange girl that other than the meager amount of food he took from her, he only wants “your hand to kiss” (45). He instead hides things such as his financial state or how he truly feels about Roxane. Through his mistakes, we learn that the payoff to being courageous is that Roxane would have known that it was him she loved. Relating to my own insecurities, after getting hurt by “friends” enough times, it was hard for me to put myself out there and meet new people. It took courage to trust and be vulnerable, and though I did get hurt during the process, the friends I have now have made running that risk so very worth it. Cyrano uses his panache to compensate for his insecure feelings. Instead of dealing with his insecurity with his nose, he chooses to cover it up by either fighting everyone or astounding them with his words about it. His panache is his defense mechanism, but in the end it is also the root of his destruction. His “satires make a host of enemies” (206) that result in him getting killed, but they are what he has used to deal with his insecurities his whole life. This goes to show how the best way to solve a problem is to deal with it and not try to evade it. I think about the times that I could have run from my insecurities and I know I would’ve either ended up friendless or else pretending to be someone I’m not, neither of which are beneficial in the long run. Cyrano’s panache is a good cover-up but fails as a solution. Self-confidence is something I’ll probably always struggle with to an extent, but learning to love myself and  surround myself with people who care about who I am as a person has changed me for the better and helped me tackle this insecurity.
