Letting go

I went for the angel reading yesterday - I'm still mulling it over. Some of it was completely off the wall - some seemed to relate to the relations who had accompanied me and were sauntering about upstairs in the shop.
A lot was spot on, I suppose. Yes, my confidence has taken a battering over the years and I'm certainly not the assertive young woman I once was when I thought the world was at my feet (Yes, I know it still is, but life has a habit of getting in the way...) She pinpointed events (oh how I remember how absolutely dying in love I was with a tall dark haired man only for him to take a fancy to one of my friends.... And how on another occasion I sat one day and just stared into space for hours unable to move, crippled with depression, but how an angel was by my side the whole time...)
She pinpointed that I was crippled with anxiety and that particularly lately things had been tough.
She told me it would be okay.
But she also told me I needed to put more of me into my writing. I'm trying to mull that over. I think I do put a lot of me in my books, and in my columns. Some times I feel as if I lay myself out on line too much and that is why, at times, I feel completely raw as if I have no secrets.
But then again there is so much of me that is just me - that I put on a show, plaster on a smile and become "author Claire" as opposed to boring mammy/ wife Claire who just gets on with things and has some Very Dark Thoughts from time to time.
I 'm just not sure which one of those ladies is real me though. Is it the bubbly, confident one who can make people smile or is it the boring, moping, dour one who makes people switch off. I'm a little bit afraid of both.
But I do remember that day, aged about 19 when I got all glammed up for a night out with friends (including the big crush). He looked at me, genuinely really shocked at how well I scrubbed up and he flirted mercilessly all night. He even stayed over (he slept in the living room, you dirt birds). He made a move and I backed off - always a little scared. That same week he told our mutual friend he was mad about her and "Claire was okay... but he really liked her".
And thus sealed my belief that I always was the consolation prize.
The angel lady gave me some techniques for dealing with negative feelings and they are helping, but having brought things I'd thought I'd long forgotten back to my consciousness, I now have to work through them. I have to make myself believe that I am more than "just ok".