I’ve been performing in theatrical productions for as long as I can remember. I was in my first real show at four years old, and pretty much haven’t stopped since. Yet, also for as long as I can remember, I’ve had what I can now identify as anxiety when it comes to public speaking or being on a large platform of any kind. Whenever people would ask me how I could do theatre but get extremely anxious before a class presentation, I always just said “When I’m on stage, I’m not me, I’m playing a character.” As I  got older and I started my podcast, the “performing” I was doing was never public, it was all into a microphone in a room with just my sister. Because of the seclusion that a medium like podcasting can provide, I never felt that same anxiety I did when it came to presenting a project or giving a speech. Then, we started doing live performances of our podcast in front of pretty big audiences, and that same nervous feeling didn’t surface the way I expected. Shortly after starting college, I had to give an important presentation at a formal event in front of a large crowd; it was unlike anything I had ever done before. Yet, even though I was nowhere near as prepared as I should have been, I found myself comfortably talking to the audience and being excited to continue, slightly disappointed when it was all over.

So, looking back on all of these experiences, I can’t find those same reasons to be anxious anymore. Sure, I still get the occasional nerves when I have to present something to a class full of my peers, but nothing like I had experienced before that made me feel like my stomach was full of wasps, not butterflies. All I can gather is that there is something I have gained as I’ve grown up that I didn’t have before, and that I’ve never been used to: confidence. I feel confident now in who I am and how well I can present my ideas, and I never used to be. I used to need to hide behind a character or a microphone to not have an anxiety attack before speaking in front of people. I guess confidence is another one of those “grown up things” that you hope you’ll have one day, but never really fully realize when you finally do.

Rileigh Smirl can be contacted at [email protected].