Never thought I'd be writing this anonymously on the internet, but here we are. I'm 32, work in finance in London, and I'm 5'6". That's it. That's the thing that's been in the back of my mind for basically my entire adult life.

I don't talk about it. Nobody really does, do they? It's not like you can bring it up at the pub without sounding properly mental. "Yeah, cheers for the pint mate, by the way I've spent fifteen years feeling like I'm fighting for respect in every room I walk into." Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

But it's there. Always there. Every client meeting where I'm the shortest person at the table. Every wedding photo where I'm somehow always in the front row looking like someone's younger brother who got dragged along. Every date where she's in flats and we're still eye-to-eye and I can feel her doing the math in her head about whether she can wear heels around me.

The worst part isn't even the height itself. It's the constant low-level awareness of it. Like having a stone in your shoe that you can't take out, so you just adjust your walk and pretend it's fine. You develop this whole personality around being "the funny one" or "the sharp one" because you figure if you can't command a room with presence, you'd better do it with something else.

I got passed over for a promotion last year. My manager - lovely bloke, genuinely - gave me all the feedback about being "more assertive" and "projecting more authority" and I just sat there thinking: mate, I project plenty. You just can't see it from up there.

That's when I started actually looking into options. I'd seen ads for height insoles before - always dismissed them as gimmicky rubbish for insecure men. Which, to be fair, I suppose I am. But I'd reached this point where I thought, you know what? Women wear makeup. Lads who are going bald take finasteride. People get their teeth straightened. Why am I treating this like some sort of moral failing?

Found Inchmaxxers through a Reddit thread, of all places. Someone had posted asking for recommendations and the comments were surprisingly honest - not the usual internet pile-on, but actual blokes talking about their experiences. Ordered the Summit ones. Figured if I was going to do this, might as well commit.

First time I wore them was to a work event. Spent the entire Uber ride there convinced everyone would immediately know. That I'd walk in and someone would point and laugh like I was a kid who'd nicked his dad's shoes. Got to the venue, walked through the doors, and... nothing. Nobody said anything. Nobody looked at me weird. I was just there, in the room, taking up the space I was taking up.

Except I was standing differently. Bit straighter. Bit more solid. And when I talked to the senior partners, I wasn't doing that thing where I unconsciously try to make myself taller by standing on my toes or craning my neck. I was just... talking to them. Normally. Like a person.

The thing nobody tells you about trying something like this is that it's not magic. I didn't suddenly become a different person. I didn't walk in three inches taller and have the entire room fall silent in awe. But I stopped spending mental energy on managing how I felt about my height, which meant I could spend that energy on literally anything else. On doing my actual job. On having actual conversations. On being present instead of performing.

My girlfriend found them about two months in. I'd been rotating between a couple of pairs of shoes and she was helping me organize my closet and just pulled one out and asked what they were. I'd rehearsed this conversation in my head about fifty times, had all these defensive explanations ready. Instead, I just told her the truth. She looked at them, looked at me, and said, "Fair enough. I've been getting filler in my lips for two years." We both just started laughing.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that some insoles fixed my life or whatever. That's not how any of this works. But I will say this: I've stopped spending energy on something that was taking up way too much space in my head. I've stopped walking into rooms and immediately clocking who's taller than me. I've stopped having this constant background radiation of anxiety about whether I'm being taken seriously.

Last month I got the promotion. Same job I'd been doing, same skills I'd had before. But I'd stopped second-guessing myself in meetings. Stopped over-explaining things because I was worried I wasn't being heard. Just... showed up and did the work.

Do I still think about my height? Yeah, sometimes. Probably always will. But it's not the first thing anymore. It's not the thing that colors everything else. It's just... a thing. And I've got better things to think about now.

I'm not telling you to buy anything. I'm just telling you that if you've spent years carrying this weight around, and there's something that makes it lighter - even just a bit lighter - maybe that's worth something. Maybe you're worth something. Maybe we all are, regardless of how many inches we're starting with.

Nobody's going to give you permission to do something about the thing that's been bothering you. You've got to give yourself that permission. And if anyone's got a problem with it, that's theirs to carry, not yours.