I am a people pleaser.
I am an apologizer.
I am that person who goes out of their way to make sure that everyone else is ok before I think about myself.
These traits seem selfless. But I’ve come to find how actually selfish they are – to myself. How?! Well, the turning point for me was when I realized that my pleasing was effecting my flares. Also, when James told me I needed to think about my health first or I was going to always be sick.
This meant a lot of things to me, especially at the time. I was at a job that was, literally, killing me. It was a catty environment, where I was leaving each day and crying in my car; a mixture of the flare pain and emotional pain. I don’t talk about this time very often because looking back on it I find it quite silly how long it took me to quit.
I was only there a short time, like 3 months… but those 3 months were miserable. The clash of personalities and my people pleasing started right away. I am that person who will take the blame for everything – to help someone else avoid feeling bad. Then the job entered that, high school stage; like the rumor mill horrific experience that it was.
It’s a car dealership, and I have been told since that they are all like this – but wow – this was horrendous. I had no clue what I was doing, no one to show me, and no one to train me – but I was expected to change the world there. When I asked questions I felt like I was being made fun for not knowing; worse yet they would make fun of me behind my back for it.
It took my confidence and self-esteem to a below sea level area. Especially when they started to make a show of excluding me from things, silly pointless things. It’s been a longish road coming back from that pain, but I learned a very valuable lesson.
Some people suck. Being a people pleaser, I suppressed a lot of emotion – I focused of keeping up appearances – I got used – No one at this time knew me… the real me. I’ve spent many years being this version of myself – controlling the way people saw me, not getting to close and hiding from intense social interactions.
I’ve spent years, friends, boyfriends, co-workers, everyone thinking they knew who I was, when really they hadn’t even scratched the surface of my me. James is one of the first people to know me, I have no idea how it happened (divine intervention I guess). But our friendship blossomed into helping me through that low point and finding me.
It’s been a process. I see a therapist, like 3x a week to get through….
It’s not healthy for a normal person to be this way – so my immune system hates me + stress = flares = I was such a dumbass to put myself last for so long when I could have ended flares. I’ve brought all this pain on myself – it’s refreshing to have friends now that know me, and I know like me for me – not for who I project to be. To be in a relationship with someone who knows who I am, that’s earth changing!
I don’t need to be in control of how people see me. I’m a nice person, and I do nice things – because I want too – not because I feel like I have too.